I catch about one of the President’s weekly addresses each month, and half the time I’m distracted from his message by the skill of his delivery. His messages are clear, precise, and accessible. They actually make sense and sound like they’re being spoken by someone intelligent, who in turn respects your ability to reason.

I was going to say that maybe he’ll raise the bar for what we expect from our leaders’ oratory abilities, but I’ll be satisfied if he just puts the bar back up from where someone else kept knocking it down.

Anyhow, it’s hard for me to picture his predecessor saying anything like the following (from his 5/2/2009 address on H1N1):

And the White House has launched pages in Facebook, MySpace and Twitter to support the ongoing efforts by the CDC to update the public as quickly and effectively as possible.

As our scientists and researchers learn more information about this virus every day, the guidance we offer will likely change. What will not change is the fact that we’ll be making every recommendation based on the best science possible.

If twitter wasn’t mainstreamed before, it certainly is now.

The other quote comes from the narrator’s wrap up from the latest episode of Pseudopod, the weekly horror podcast, which I listen to more religiously than any Sunday sermonizing. This story wasn’t particularly memorable, but Alasdair Stuart’s insight into human character, related in his gorgeous accent (Manx?), struck home:

“I’ve met hundreds of people in my life, and not a single one of them was intact. We are all broken, all carrying our faults on our backs and in our hearts, all of us consumed by the sneaking suspicion that we are terrible disappointments, that the people who say they like us are only saying that, that we are tolerated at best, mocked at worst.

We are all wrong. We are all extraordinary.”

This is just a snippet of a few minutes of similar philosophizing and encouragement that begin 18:00 minutes into the podcast. And maybe many of you will agree. Part of the reason I present myself fairly transparently to the world is so that you all will have no excuse to love me or like me, because certainly the true me is abhorrent?

Amen, brother Stuart. We are all broken. We are all extraordinary.