Fighting Words by Richard F. Miller

Author:Richard F. Miller
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Bisac Code 1: HIS000000
ISBN: 9781611210521
Publisher: Savas Beatie
Published: 2010-05-20T07:00:00+00:00

Section Five

Speechlets

Speechlets were defined in the Introduction, so this section resumes that discussion with three questions: first, how did some battle one-liners come to be Speechlets? Next, how did they come to be famous? Finally, why did some Speechlets endure and prove astonishingly durable, “leaping” not from “brain to brain”, as Dawkins would have it, but from meme-stream to meme-stream? As an example, think here of “Don’t give up the ship!” First uttered (probably) by a mortally wounded ship captain, the words then leaped to newspapers, the general public, back to the U.S. Navy as an unofficial motto, later to football coaches and, at some point, to parents stiffening their children’s resolve to finish their homework.

But first, there is no better introduction to all three questions than a famous non-military Speechlet that should be within the memory of many readers. In January 1984 fast food chain Wendy’s International aired a commercial featuring three elderly women examining an oversized hamburger bun. One of them lifted the top of the bun only to discover that the meat patty beneath was only slightly larger than the inch-wide sliced pickle sitting on it; the bun dwarfed both the patty and the pickle. “Where’s the beef?” then eighty-two-year-old character actress Clara Peller asked, before repeating the question twice more. Meanwhile, a voiceover explained that “[a]t Wendy’s, you get more beef and less bun.” It was a popular commercial defined by its clever refrain. It was also intended as a Speechlet—a persuasive argument—but one meant to reach no further than fast food customer meme-streams. However, these words did not remain in that meme-stream for long. By February the New York Times could entitle an article “Where’s the Beef? All Over [T]own,” which noted that the phrase had become “grist for humor mills from the playground to the pulpit.”1

But the Speechlet’s status changed forever on March 11, 1984. That evening five Democrat Party candidates for president debated in Atlanta. Moderator John Chancellor asked the group: “[I]f one of you wins the election will there be less involvement [of the federal government in peoples’ lives] or will it be a return to the way things were before Reagan?” Candidate Gary Hart’s 177-word answer employed the generalities customary in presidential debates. Then Walter Mondale turned towards Hart and replied in fourteen words: “When I hear your new ideas, I’m reminded of that ad: ‘Where’s the beef?’”2

A Speechlet had not been born; but an existing Speechlet had both merged and morphed. It had merged: first, the meme-streams of Madison Avenue had flowed towards fast food patrons; next, this stream widened to include Manhattanhites generally; finally, with a push from Walter Mondale, the Speechlet joined the widest of all meme-streams, the national consciousness. Simultaneously, it had morphed: what had been a Speechlet arguing that competitors’ hamburgers did not deserve the name “hamburger” now became one political candidate’s argument that a rival’s argument was devoid of substance, and thus (by implication) so was the rival. Both applications of “Where’s the beef?” were

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