Valvano vs. Eastwood

Speeches can be influential, moving, insignificant, and entertaining, as well as many other things.  So far from the videos we’ve watched in class, Jimmy Valvano’s ESPY speech was by far the best.  It was the most effective of all the videos we’ve seen thus far.  Valvano’s audience was a group of people all invited to the awards show.  His purpose was to speak to others about how they should never give up, no matter what the obstacles.  He had cancer and died shortly after his speech.  Valvano wanted to give hope to others, as he said in the speech.  There was logos in his speech when he spoke of how many people would die of cancer.  There was pathos because of how he included that his body was covered in tumors created a sense of empathy for him.  He spoke of love, and sadness, and family, as well as many other emotional topics during his speech.  Regarding credibility, he was credible to everyone who knew him because he was a well-known coach as well as a person fighting cancer.  The presentation was given to a group of people with connections to sports, this is usually a crowd who believes in the goodness of the game, how people are brought closer together by teamwork, and how hard work and determination will reap rewards.  This audience is perfect for this kind of a speech, because they are open to hope and love and laughter, all of which Valvano included in his speech. The only weakness to Valvano’s speech was that, although the emotional aspect in my opinion was extremely successful, some people may have preferred more facts.  They may have believed that he played the emotional card too much and that if he was a truly credible speaker, he would have used many more facts than he did.  Overall, though, this speech was the best.  The speech that I’ve disliked the most so far was Clint Eastwood’s speech at the Republican National Convention.  Regarding ethos, there was a lot of it.  People respect Clint Eastwood and love him because of his “tough guy” image.  His pathos was significant because he said that he cried about unemployment and, with the “tough guy” image, this is interesting and appealing to audiences.  He used a chair during this speech to basically “slam” the current president, Barack Obama.  He almost used no logos in his speech and instead based his main points almost solely on what a poor job the president has done.   He stumbled a lot throughout the speech.  He focused on things that were more entertaining for people rather than the facts.  For a governmental convention, I believe he should have used many more facts because at the end of the day, the facts are going to be what matters to the people.  His target audience included Republicans who want a change in the presidential lineup, as well as Democrats because he was trying to make a point towards them that their leader has not been successful in his job and they need to vote for the other party.  I believe that his ethos was a benefit towards his target audience, though.  This was the best part of the speech, the fact that he is Clint Eastwood, “Mr. Tough Guy.”  It made Republicans seem strong and conservative no matter who you support.  Both speeches have their strong and weak points, but I believe Valvano’s was by far the best and Eastwood’s was the worst.