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“Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump and his party are scrambling to contain the fallout from a conservative Alabama court ruling that prompted some state providers to suspend in vitro fertilization treatments.”
— Reuters
Life begins at conception. Therefore, we must force girls and women to give birth because an embryo is a person who deserves full personhood, just like corporations. So when the Alabama Supreme Court decided that all embryos should be considered children, I rejoiced wholeheartedly—right up until the moment I saw the results of the National Republican Senate Committee’s internal poll.
In this column, professional speechwriter Chandler Dean provides partly satirical, partly genuine “How To” advice focused on a hyper-specific subcategory of speeches—from graduation speeches to wedding toasts to eulogies, and all the rhetorical occasions in between.
So your best friend or sibling or child or cousin or a second-tier friend has asked you to give a toast at their wedding. In one sense, you should be honored—because you’ve been deemed one of the best people to put words to the exhilarating feelings associated with this unforgettable day. In another sense, you should be horrified—because you will be one of the last things standing between hundreds of travel-weary reception attendees and dinner.
But you can meet the moment and let the caterers mete out the meal, if you make these sacred vows:
Address the elephant in the room.
With apologies to the great Wendell Berry.
When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound, I sometimes go down to the local theater and check out the latest Marvel spectacle, preferably in 3D, because it’s more abundant in real pleasure.
Lately, though, the work of Marvel and its sort has been lacking in several kinds of sense. Here, then, are my humbly offered suggestions for improvement:
1. The villains have just not been believable. Why a squinting, purple monster looking to eliminate half of life in the universe when the strip mining industry is right there? Instead of sending a thermonuclear missile into space, the Avengers could handcuff themselves inside the Governor’s office as an act of nonviolent protest.