How Do You Eat an Elephant?

Tell the truth. Keep telling the truth

How Do You Eat an Elephant?

Author
By Jim Yardley

There is a very old category of jokes that mock the listener by asking them a question.  The target is asked questions and the target immediately assumes that it must be a “trick” question.  Two such questions come to mind immediately (since my grandfather took delight in tormenting me with them):  “Why did the chicken cross the road?” and “Why do firemen wear red suspenders?”

There must be some deep seated suspicion that when one is asked such a seemingly simple question, the answer must be extraordinarily obscure, otherwise, why would such a question be asked in the first place.  Perhaps Charles Krauthammer could explain the psychological roots of this, but for now let’s just take it as a given.

So now we come to the title question of this article.  How Do You Eat an Elephant?  And the correct answer is the obvious one – One bite at a time.

As we gear up for the 2014 mid-term elections and the festivities that will surround the 2016 Presidential election circus, conservatives are faced with answering the question – How do we explain that Democrats and RINOs are lying to the voters?  The answer should be just as obvious as the one about eating an elephant.  Tell the truth.  Keep telling the truth.

Keep calling out the Democrats and RINOs who are more interested in what they personally stand to gain versus what they are supposed to be doing for the people who voted for them.

The real trick is getting the average voter listen to the truth, and we can only do that by feeding them the truth exactly as if it were an elephant, which means one bite at a time.
Admittedly there are some who fancy themselves to be great orators, deep thinkers and those writers whose idea of a succinct article is one that is roughly the same length as War and Peace. In other words, the usual talking heads that are apologists for RINOs and Democrats. These people are pretty much beyond hope.

But for the rest of us who are just as passionate about rescuing our country but who don’t appear on the Sunday talk shows or the panel on Fox’s Special Report, take this admonition to heart – learn to think like a skilled salesman, and use the K.I.S.S. principle.  Keep It Simple, Stupid!

We all suffered through Barack Obama’s last State of the Union performance, and we have to ask ourselves this – How long did it take for your eyes to glaze over?  We, the conservative heart of America, need to keep the audience awake and engaged whether we are speaking or writing.  We cannot bore voters.  We cannot treat them as if they were idiots who know nothing.  But neither can we assume that everyone is as knowledgeable as some of us undoubtedly are in a particular field.

So those of us who write or speak have to put a tight rein on our egos and the understandable urge to display our intellects.  For the next two years, the only place for that kind of behavior is at a convention of Barack Obama impersonators.

Speakers, whether addressing a local Tea Party gathering, or candidates whether addressing a national audience or an audience that doesn’t quite fill the local American Legion hall have to get past the desire to lecture, hector, browbeat, nag or harangue.  Try phrasing things as if you just stopped cutting the grass to get a drink of water and your neighbor just wandered over.  Ask yourself (before you open your mouths), how would Ronald Reagan have phrased this?  We already know how Obama and the Progressives would phrase it, and the words racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic and the phrases “War on Women”, “pro assault rifles”, the Koch brothers and “anti-immigration” would be worked into every paragraph.  Even if the question is about tax policies.

Don’t do that.  No matter how cool a phrase has been viewed by a focus group, don’t use it more often than once every fortnight.  (Yeah, I know, I know.  Really Jim?  Fortnight?  Well, I never had a chance to use a word like “fortnight” before, so put up with it, will ya?)

That little aside about using a word like “fortnight” is exactly the tone I’ve been trying to convey.  Get your audience to laugh with you, and they are going to listen more closely to the rest of what you have to say, and be more willing to accept it or at least think about it.  See how often Reagan used the same technique.

We all have to try to keep each speech or article on a single subject.  Better yet, a single aspect of a single subject.  Craft the communication to provide “sound bites”, even if no cameras are present.  There’s an old adage in business that a happy customer will tell two or three people at most that they had a good experience. The same thing happens when they read or hear a good line or phrase that puts into words what they were thinking.  If they don’t like what they hear or read, that number of people that they tell that they are unhappy jumps above ten very quickly.  You want to give the audience phrases that will stick in their minds, and will be repeated to those folk who missed hearing your speech or seeing your article or they even missed a chance to interrupt you while you’re taking a break from cutting the grass.

If each person repeats an idea that they like three more, and those three repeat it to three more each, then you have a total of nine people at least thinking about it.  And if those nine do the same, and then there are twenty-seven, and on and on.  Do you think that’s an exaggeration?  How many are old enough to actually remember John Kennedy’s inaugural speech were he said “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”  Yet how many millions know those words by heart?

That’s the one idea that I was going to address today, so here ends the lesson.