George Clooney and Hillary Clinton's comparison

This is an essay I wrote for Writing for the Ear class when I was in Professional Writing.  It's a speech class:

I chose to compare George Clooney’s and Hillary Clinton’s speeches because they are both good persuasive arguments about helping people who are defenceless.  They are also directed to the UN, an international organization that deals with human rights issues.  Clooney and Clinton are two powerful philanthropists who are trying to change the world. 

George Clooney is a famous actor and a human rights activist.  On Sept. 14, 2006, he delivered a speech about Darfur to the United Nations Security Council.  Clooney is trying to persuade them to stop the genocide in Darfur and provide aid to this war- torn country.  The key message is that the United Nations needs to step in now, provide aid and stop the war in Darfur.  If the UN doesn’t, then more women and children will be raped and murdered.  Then aid for the refugees wouldn’t be necessary; instead only people to dig graves for the corpses would be needed.  He provides a logical reason that if the UN doesn’t protect the aide workers; they will leave and not be able to help the millions of refugees.  Jan Egeland estimates that the refugees will die at a rate of 100,000 a month.

He has a sense of seriousness as he’s speaking with a matter- of- fact tone.  He makes eye contact and moves his left hand a bit to emphasize what he’s saying.  He says, “Now my job” quickly right before he provides us with powerful imagery: “Of course it's complex, but when you see entire villages raped and killed, wells poisoned and then filled with the bodies of its villagers, then all complexities disappear and it comes down to simply right and wrong.”

Clooney starts and end his speech by thanking the UN.  He uses the rhetoric scheme anaphora in his speech.  “You know the numbers. You know the urgency. And you know how bad this is likely to get”; “You have to decide what's most urgent. You have responsibility to protect”; and “How you deal with it will be your legacy, your Rwanda, your Cambodia, your Auschwitz.”  He also uses repetition by repeating the word “task” in paragraph three and the phrase “will die” in paragraph five.

Clooney uses the rhetoric scheme polysyndeton: “In the time that we're here today, more women and children will die violently in the Darfur region than in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Israel, or Lebanon” and the antithesis: “But make no mistake: It is the first genocide of the 21st century. And if it continues unchecked it will not be the last.”

As for Hillary Clinton, she also starts and ends her speech by thanking the UN.  Hillary Clinton delivered a speech “to the U.N. 4th World Conference on Women Plenary Session” on Sept. 5, 1995.  Back then, Clinton was the First Lady to President Bill Clinton.  Among the audience were “Mrs. Mongella, Under Secretary Kittani, distinguished delegates and guests” Clinton addressed. 

Clinton’s objective was to shed a light on the serious international issues of how women and girls are struggling to survive and are being raped, and murdered.  She provides shocking statistics: “Women comprise more than half the word’s population. Women are 70% of the world’s poor, and two-thirds of those are not taught to read and write.”

Clinton uses a variety of rhetoric schemes like anaphora, polysyndeton, epistrophe, and parallelism.  Clinton used the rhetoric anaphora with repetition at the beginning by saying “It is a violation of human rights” and then mentioning the abuse of women because she wants to tell people that women are human and not property.  She also used “I have met” as she lists people who are helping others and whom she met when she traveled around the world.

Clinton also uses the rhetoric scheme anaphora: “Women also are dying from diseases that should have been prevented or treated. They are watching their children succumb to malnutrition caused by poverty and economic deprivation. They are being denied the right to go to school by their own fathers and brothers. They are being forced into prostitution, and they are being barred from the band lending office and banned from the ballot box.”  The message is to stop abuse of women and have them being treated as equals to men.

George Clooney’s speech was very effective due to his star power as a celebrity.  People will listen to him.  It was informative in telling us facts about what’s going on in Darfur. He provides a short three and half min. speech and gets right to point.  Hillary Clinton’s speech was very effective because at that time, she was the First Lady to the President Bill Clinton and because she is a woman.  If a man were making the speech, it would not be nearly as effective because of his gender.  Though I find her speech was long, it didn’t hurt the power behind the message.