Speechifiyin'

I have mixed feelings about dragging my son to see "The King's Speech." This is mostly because it did not feature any prominent roles for fast cars that transform into giant robots, but also because I remember being a teenager and recall just how excruciating it was to listen to grown-ups talk. To be sure, I used to revel in the tales of certain grown-ups on certain topics. Specifically, I was always happy to sit for hours to be regaled with stories about "the olden days," especially when they ended up talking about me when I was little. That was pleasure.
The torture came from listening to grown-ups go on about things that did not concern me, or at least those things that I felt did not concern me.
My parents were very interested in the words our president had to say. I couldn't understand this, since my experience they disagreed with every utterance of Richard Nixon, and then Gerald Ford. Even Jimmy Carter's addresses met with grumbles and misgivings, and they voted for him. It was only after I put together the fact that my mother and father were children of the radio, and they had grown up waiting for their orders from Franklin Roosevelt over the air. That was an event. It was, dare I say, eagerly anticipated. By the time Tricky Dick showed up on our televisions decades later, the special-ness had been worn through. But the habit had not.
I remember how my son, conditioned by his parents' gritting of their collective teeth at the sound of George W. Bush's voice wondered aloud why we wanted to listen to anything this man had to say.
It's important, we used to tell him. Then came Barack Obama, whose style of oration captured everyone in our living room. My son sat still for his speech at the Democratic National Convention, and stayed up late to see him speak to the crowd in Chicago on election night. By the time the State of the Union rolled around, his interest had waned. This was business as usual. This was an update that could be understood best by checking out the details later that evening on Google.
It made me think of the old Steve Martin bit about how much easier things might have gone down for Richard Nixon if he had a banjo: "I'd like to talk to you all about politics, but first a little 'Foggy Mountain Breakdown!'" My suggestion for heads of state current and future: transforming robots.