Mayor Tom Bradley Press Conference after First Night of LA Riots
Background
On April 29, 1992, the trial for the police who were charged with assaulting Rodney King concluded. The trial ended with the officers being acquitted of any wrong doing. In wake of this verdict, years of repressed hatred erupted on the streets of LA. On the following day, Mayor Tom Bradley held a press conference in which he urged the citizens of LA to remain calm and civil.
More specifically, Mayor Bradley stated that he understood the anger that the black population of the city felt at the verdict, but he argued that this anger should be expressed verbally, not through violence.
Relationship to RFK speech after the assassination of MLK
I chose to analyze this artifact, because I found the failure of the artifact to deliver the same result of the RFK’s speech interesting. Both speeches have the same message and both use similar methods to communicate their point, yet Bradley’s appeal failed. It is for this reason, the failure of Bradley’s speech to achieve it’s goal, that I wanted to analyze it, to see more clearly what exactly determines whether or not a speech will be successful.
By comparing the similarities and differences in the speeches, I am hoping that I will be able to isolate where Bradley went wrong, and what RFK did right. Choosing these speeches works quite well because the similarities between them allows for an almost scientific study of rhetorical persuasion. For example both were given in response to racial outrage, both attempted to calm riotous people, both attempted to convey a message of peace and tranquility instead of hatred and anger.
I think that my analysis will mostly focus on how the speakers used kairos and rhetorical appeals. It seems that the delayed press conference and lack of timelessness in manner that Bradley conveyed his message is one reason why he failed. While Kennedy succeed because he was delivering the speech the day of the assassination and focused more on the timelessness of his message (references the future that they are building throughout the speech). In regards to the rhetorical appeals, Bradley spent very little time developing pathos before jumping into logos, which is one big reason why I think that he failed. In comparison, the majority of Kennedy’s speech was based around pathos and ethos, before briefly touching on logos at the end. I think that this is one of the major reasons why Kennedy was successful, that he was able to invest the audience in his message before stating the purpose of his speech. I think that the thing that can most be learned from comparing the two speeches is that there is more to a speech than just having a superlative message, the methods in which a speech is delivered have to be superlative too.