zerinus wrote:Chap wrote:Well, he read both his addresses from a teleprompter, did he not? But he certainly did so efficiently enough to suggest that he is not in a state of radical confusion.
He was not always looking at the teleprompter. He only seemed to do that when he was quoting something. He seemed to have memorized most of his talk.
Oh, come on! NOBODY delivers GC addresses without the teleprompter! They are nowadays carefully placed so as to be imperceptible to those watching the broadcast talks, and enable the speaker to read from them while looking naturally in the direction of the audience Fortunately not every LDS is as naïve as you are:
https://mybestlds.com/2016/03/29/3-gene ... il-lately/The teleprompters in the new Conference Center are invisible to the audience, but here’s what they look like with the lights up and from behind the pulpit. It looks like they keep some glasses of water and a bowl of cough drops or mints under the pulpit, too. That’s really thoughtful of someone.
But during conference, the teleprompters are invisible to the audience. The speaker can read the words on them, though. I have no idea how that works, and I’m fairly savvy.
And:
Behind the Scenes at General ConferenceTeleprompting
In the prompter booth, personnel obtain scripts and talks ahead of time and project them onto the teleprompter at the stand during the talks.
“We accommodate the requests of the Brethren to help them present their message,” Brother Smith said. “We do what will allow them to best present their message to the world.”
Chap wrote:I listened to both [Monson] addresses. Neither of them rose above the commonplace so far as I can see.
zerinus wrote:That depends on what you call commonplace. You would have probably found the Sermon on the Mount commonplace as well.
Nope. The Sermon on the Mount is full of surprising and counterfactual statements, ideas that lay the foundations of a quite new view of the world. All we got from Monson was basically 'Play nice, and read the Book of Mormon every day. It's all true, believe me - would I lie to you?".