The Highlighter

Did historic figures highlight parts of their own speeches?

“Ask not…,” or

“The only thing we have to fear…,” or

“If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”

The first two have been highlighted many times for us. The third (from Shirley Chisholm), I just did.

Which got me thinking — what are those highlights doing to influence how I read an article? Do I subconsciously scan for the highlights as a kind of executive summary? I was always taught not to write in the marginalia of books, owned or borrowed. Doing so removes the next reader’s chance to meet the author’s words unfiltered.

This highlighting — this emphasis of words by others — is not restricted to printed text. It extends to audiovisual clips of passages from speeches. The lengthy speech is distilled into a memorable line or phrase. When repeated often enough, it becomes the entire speech thanks to the highlighter. And the highlighting then has a cascading effect, drawing others to remember the highlighted point above the rest that was said. Sometimes, it’s at the exclusion of the rest.

In the highlighter we trust.

What if the highlighter gets it wrong? It might be because the writer (or speechwriter) lacked the skill to turn a phrase like President Kennedy’s,

“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”

Suppose the highlighter didn’t follow the cadence and noted the wrong phrase. Or, some other phrase caught their eye instead.

This has gotten me thinking counterfactually. What if the highlighter wasn’t in attendance on September 1961 when President Kennedy addressed an excited crowd at Rice Stadium in Houston? That might have mattered, for it was the remarks immediately preceding the call to go to the Moon that lifted that crowd to its feet. They heard him ask about their school’s football archrival —

"Why, why does Rice play Texas?"

They were on their feet, cheering wildly, when Kennedy continued:

"But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?"

Then, with the cheering now filling the stadium —

"We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard..."

Without being in the stands, hearing that crowd, and feeling that crescendo, the highlighter — reading the transcript — might have taken the Moon line to be one more political goal, no higher than the mountains.

Maybe we still would have gone to the Moon. But that’s the thing about counterfactuals: not all of them can have their truth values easily determined. Suppose the transcript had been highlighted by an editor who was not in attendance and never saw footage of the speech. Would the call to go to the Moon have been highlighted? Who knows for sure?

I know this much. If “climb the highest mountain” and “the other things” had been highlighted, we might not have left town, let alone the planet.

I’m not suggesting we eliminate highlighting. Practically, we can’t attend to everything. We need people we trust to point us towards what is important. But I may think twice about that awesome responsibility before I assume the role of a highlighter.