Russ Willstrong":zmqwjfpv said:
As for the lies told in his speech.. Are they intentional lies or did he just not recall accurate details while caught up in the story telling about his struggles and emotions.
*****MODS: Please delete if this post isn't appropriate for this forum (it's very much on topic but strays into a topic that is more commonly discussed in a different forum, and in writing it I'm being pretty careful to not intentionally poke any off-topic bears)*******
Three thoughts on this:
1) It's a prepared speech. I seriously doubt he got caught up on the details due to emotions as he wasn't speaking on the fly.
2) (The part I want to be sensitive about): For the crowd of Evangelical Christians that Wilson travels in these types of "climb the mountain" personal narratives are kind of the stock-and-trade of public speaking. It's a community that has sort of blended self-help narratives into what they understand as expressions of God's love. When speaking to and with that audience the details of the story are kind of beside the point, as it's the message of the story that makes it powerful.
This only becomes a problem when those outside of this community hear these personal narratives and call foul on their factual accuracy: they don't really buy or care about the "message" of the stories, and don't understand that for like-minded audiences the veracity of individual details is entirely beside the point of why the story is being told. It's like how Ben Carson got a ton of crap from non-Evangelical Christians for his factually fictitious story about his prof at Yale, while Evangelical Christians were pissed that people were picking on him, being unfair, and missing the point by quibbling about the details.
To be entirely clear I'm not saying that one way is right or one way is wrong, but rather, I'm saying that Wilson is kind of stumbling between two really different audiences who hear these "climb the mountain" personal narratives in two REALLY different ways.
Dollars to donuts that those in the Evangelical Christian community who heard this speech recognized the genre it was in and thought it was pretty wonderful, and think those who are complaining about it are dunderheads who just don't get it.
3) One also has to consider that it's a graduation speech, which in itself is a venue of public speaking in which "message" is much more of the point than factual accuracy. I do however think the speech was infused with dog whistles for a like-minded audience to Wilson, but such is the problem with trying to speak to multiple audiences in a single speech.