DiscussMormonism.com

Water Dog wrote:No, they are horrible. As much as I wish the opposite were true, they are awful as speech's go. They come across as very confident speakers, but they have a very obviously teleprompted and vain repetitious tone to them. This is why people fall asleep and after every conference people crack jokes about how each apostle reminds them of this or that. Many of the speakers, especially the women, also tend to be very patronizing and have a sappy primary-like tone and way about them when they speak. They put on an show of being super-spiritual but it is sickeningly fake and transparent. No real person talks like this. Very few of the talks are down to earth or at all feel real. At first viewing this may not be apparent however. After endless years of conference, it becomes quite repetitious. It's to the point for me that I literally can't listen to certain speakers. Even if for once it's actually a good talk from this person, their tone and style of speech is so predictable and comical that I can't take their message seriously. And I know plenty of TBMs who feel that way too. It would be nice, for once, just once, to see someone go off script and say things that were obviously off-the-cuff. You know, actually be guided by the spirit.

That said though a lot of the messages are very good. Very inspiring messages, some good stories, moral lessons, etc. And I usually can find at least one or two talks that I really liked. Usually the best talks come from the general authorities, someone I've never heard from. Sometimes the regular appearances surprise me. But honestly, are any of the messages more inspiring than someone like Joel Osteen? I've listened to some of his stuff that I actually thought was really good. He kept me engaged and the message was really good. The LDS speakers are generally horrible as keeping people engaged.

Never, ever, have I heard anything in conference that was powerful and inspiring at the level of great historical speeches that we could reference though. No dream speeches, not even a tear down this wall. It's scripted and generally lacks genuine passion. People will get teary-eyed, but in a sappy way, not a let's go to war way. I think people who tend to be emotional in their approach to faith will probably like the talks a lot better than I do. Honestly, the talks almost feel negative to me at times, like they are aimed at helping people generally maintain faith in things that are depressing. I know you're depressed, life is miserable, but persevere, keep the faith.

Gadianton wrote:By this, I do not mean, are conference talks a good source of information? I in fact, mean the very opposite: Are these talks moving and persuasive, independent of the quality of information? In other words, are they good examples of rhetoric? Are they good examples of crafted scripts and strong oration? Do they equal or surpass the works of other orators: presidents, congressmen, or other religious figures or community leaders?

I do not enjoy speeches of any kind and I never have. I do not even enjoy political speeches when they are somewhat or outright parodied in movies and TV shows that I like such as "24" or "House of Cards." I've always just assumed conference talks are "good" talks, and my lack of interest is a general problem with the genre itself. For instance, I don't like watching professional sports either, but I think I can tell the difference between the work of pro athletes and amateurs. I assumed gut instincts were same, more or less, of orators, in fact, I even took a public speaking class at BYU and did all right. My teacher was one of these squeaky clean guys who would have been intolerable if it weren't that he was so utterly true to squeaky cleanliness and I really liked the guy. Anyway, this teacher was a *huge* fan of Thomas S. Monson, Neal A. Maxwell, and the GAs generally, and considered them the grand masters of public speaking, with everything that implied, right down to crediting the persuasion with anything but the content. He had many stories about the care and practice the GA's put into their conference speeches as suggestions to us for practicing.

I've always just assumed that Monson and others are great speakers even though listening to them is torture for me. The contrary thought (that I recall) only occurred to me just the other day. I discovered "The Boss" on Netflix, with Kelsey grammar, and grammar's speech in the first episode was off the charts. Had his character been a GA I may have been defrauded for a longer time. The show overall is a step down from House of Cards, and Spacey's character is just as good, but, in the particular matter of speech writing and delivery, whoever came up with that speech along with grammar's execution sets the gold standard. It's probably, in fact, good evidence that Church leaders are not inspired.

Anyway, now I'm asking you all, how do the Church leaders rate as speech writers and orators?

fetchface wrote:And ironically done in the year 1984. You just can't make this stuff up.