Two speeches this week – one to children, one to the nation – and another speech on Monday to Wall Street. On top of it all, he is still doing his weekly address online every Saturday morning. (I wonder when he films these and if he does more than one at a time or if the camera is just there for whenever he is in the ‘mood’.)

Awesome pic of the Pres

Looking at that site further, apparently this guy gives like 9000 speeches a day. When does he have time to do his job? I respect the whole importance in communication thing and for the most part would encourage it, but isn’t this volume just a tad time-consuming?

Is it normal for the US President to communicate this much? I honestly don’t recall seeing any past US Presidents on my television this frequently. Am I being ignorant?

Awesome pic of the PM - note the fireplace

In comparison, I believe the last time the Canadian Prime Minister addressed the nation was in December 2008. It was a pretty important deal about the potential collapse/take-over of our government, and even then his speech was only around 4 minutes long AND it was televised at 7 pm, as to not disrupt primetime shows.

Short, to the point, and considerate of our regularly scheduled programming and viewing habits (and the networks sensitivity to potential loss of advertising dollars.) Plus, it was filmed in a wooden room and began in a way that was like we just walked into his wooden office and interupted him from reading. All that was missing was a crackling fire in the corner and him wearing a cardigan.

I’ve read it and there isn’t anything in it to fear. No, Obama doesn’t try to indoctrinate your children into a life of communism, or whatever it is that some people are all up in arms about. And no, this is not the first time a president has addressed kids in school, either.

But for those that are still convinced that the speech may contain a hidden message that you do not want your children to hear and be brainwashed by, I give you Word Cloud Analysis.

This neat online tool takes text that you submit and generates a “word cloud” that gives “greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text”, so the more the word is repeated, the bigger it appears.

If you are curious and would like to compare, I also created a word cloud for both Bush Sr.’s and Reagan’s speeches and all three can be found below (you can click on them to view them at their full size):

Obama’s speech for September 8, 2009

Bush’s Speech, October 10, 1991

Reagan’s Speech November 14, 1988

(Note: there is a brief Q and A section that I didn’t include in the Word Cloud Analysis for Reagan’s speech.)