There can’t be many speeches by famous speakers that manage to lie unheard for 50 years.

But that’s exactly what’s happened to a 1961 speech by Malcolm X. The former Nation of Islam leader sought out a speaking opportunity at Brown University in Rhode Island after he had read an article by student Katharine Pierce.

Pierce’s article in the Brown Daily Herald had been read by members of the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X wanted the chance to defend their views in public.

It was Pierce’s colleague, Richard Holbrooke, the editor of the Brown Daily Herald and eventual career diplomat, who pleaded the case with the University and then organised the speaking visit back in 1961.

And without any memoirs ever being produced by either Malcolm X or Richard Holbrooke, who died in 2010, that’s where the story of the speech seems to have stopped.

That is until a Brown senior Malcolm Burnley, assigned a creative writing task, ventured into the library vaults and started reading old copies of the University newspapers. A trail led from a single black and white photograph of Malcolm X and a short article to the writer of the original Brown Daily Herald article, Katharine Pierce.

Katharine Pierce confirmed the story and then…retrieved a long lost tape recording of Malcolm X’s speech from her attic.

She noted:

He read his audience very, very well as a fine public speaker does

That point was confirmed by the dozens of eyewitnesses later interviewed by Malcolm Burnley in pursuit of his story. They all agreed that they might not have agreed with his views back in 1961 but Malcolm X was a compelling speaker.

Every politician and any serious business person has to turn to a speech writer for help with their speeches. They undoubtedly have the skills to write a speech themselves. What they lack is the time needed for that speech. The time to craft a flow of words, to add some magic and perfect the speech.

That’s what they pay for. So it must be really tedious when someone spots that lines from your recent speech owe an awful lot to someone else’s speech.

That’s exactly what’s happened to Anthony Albanese, leader of Australia’s House of Representatives and Minister for infrastructure and transport. It was his speech to the Australian Press Club that seized everyone’s attention.

His speech took a moment to savage Tony Abbott, the leader of the Liberal party opposition:

In Australia we have serious challenges to solve and we need serious people to solve them. Unfortunately Tony Abbot is not the least bit interested in fixing anything. He is only interested in two things, making Australians afraid of it and telling them who is to blame for it.

Those lines sounded familiar at the time. And that’s because their source was the fictional President in The American President, played by Michael Douglas. In the 1995 movie, directed by Aaron Sorkin, the lead character says in his speech:

We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it.

You couldn’t make it up.

There was a time when serious speech writers sought their inspiration from more classical sources. Now it’s Hollywood and pop. In December the former Presidential hopeful Herman Cain revealed that a lyric from a Donna Summer song in the film, Pokemon: The Movie 2000 was used in one of his speeches.

Can either the speaker or the speech writer be accused of plagiarism in Australia? No. Speech writing depends on weaving the old and the new. It’s about sourcing material that’s both relevant and familiar and also challenging. We could accuse the Australian speech writing team of laziness…but that’s a different accusation.

A well-timed and well-executed speech can portend a return to public life…for some.

So Dominique Strauss-Kahn must be hoping that his recent speech in China might herald a return to public life.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former Head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), had an eventful summer in New York facing charges of sexual assault in the New York Sofitel hotel. When the prosecution dropped all their charges Mr Strauss-Kahn was free to return to Paris…no longer the head of the IMF.

So a well-timed speech in Beijing, at the request of the Chinese internet business NetEase could mark a possible return to public life. The conference was sufficiently high-brow to accommodate a man of his stature without being too overt. Another advantage was the sheer distance between Paris and Beijing. Very useful.

His statesmanlike speech reviewed the economic and political threats facing Europe generally. Had he managed to avoid the Sofitel scandal then this is the sort of speech he would be making more regularly as a Presidential candidate in France. Plus ça change.

As it was he would not comment on the Sofitel affair nor answer any questions on the subject. This was a workmanlike speech that might prove the basis for more such public speaking.

A comeback speech by the former Cuban leader, Fidel Castro made the news a year ago. And this week it was the turn of Sonia Gandhi to make a comeback speech.

The occasion was the Youth Congress convention in New Delhi and marked her first speech since undergoing surgery in the USA in August.

Members of the Party’s youth wing had expected Party President Sonia Gandhi to speak about her son, Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi…perhaps confirming him as the next Prime Minister. But it was not to be.

Listened to by her son and the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, her speech outlined the achievements of the Congress Party and explained how much there was still to do.

Was there a theme to this speech? Yes–the drive against corruption–that was addressed throughout her speech.

The government is working on a variety of legislation which will systematically fight corruption.

Her speech wasn’t colourful. Nor was her style. Yes, there were some rhetorical devices, such as…

Politics is not about exerting power or influence, it is about building a better world.

But they were few in number.

This was a measured, assured speech to mark Sonia Gandhi’s return to political leadership of the Congress Party.

It was neither the time nor the place to anoint Rahul Gandhi as heir apparent. Such a note to her speech would have been in sharp contrast to the anti-corruption theme in her words. And the Party president knew that full well.

Being interrupted and heckled isn’t always considered a typical occupational hazard of a public speaker. But when you give a speech in Parliament, the Assembly, the Senate or the House, things are different.

That’s the nature of modern democracy.

No more so than in the Sabah State Assembly in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. The Resource Development and Information Technology Minister, Datuk Dr Yee Moh Chai, was delivering the Budget winding-up speech when he was repeatedly interrupted…by his former assistant.

That’s right. Such was the tie between the Minister and his former assistant that she chose to repeatedly interrupt his budget speech. It has to be noted that she’s now an Opposition Representative for SAPP Luyong. That might explain the heckling. But the hostility? That’s probably personal. Hell hath no fury like a personal assistant scorned.

The Minister tried to keep going with his speech. And his former assistant for five years, Melanie Chia Chua Chui Ket, kept interrupting.

Who won out? It was probably a draw. The Minister battled back with some quick jibes and he shouted at his heckler to stop interrupting his speech. The loser was undoubtedly the Deputy Speaker Datuk Johnny Mositun whose handling of the speech interruptions seemed weak.

Being left out of someone’s speech might be a cause of concern for the person omitted.

But typically it’s other people who sense an injustice on account of the omission. There are some who feel aggrieved for someone else and others who sense that the speaker is in some way disrespectful.

Justin Bieber came across this phenomenon some months back with his MTV speech at the Video Music Awards when he didn’t mention his girlfriend Selena Gomez. Bieber fans were horrified. Gomez fans were aghast and commentators dissected his speech for all sorts of meaning.

This time around it’s President Obama who’s in the spotlight for apparently failing to mention God in an internet-distributed Thanksgiving speech to the Nation.

Now Thanksgiving does, traditionally, have a religious flavour to it. That’s really what it’s all about.

But were the President’s words disrespectful or callous? Did they offend true believers?

I doubt it. After all God featured pretty well in his written Thanksgiving message to the nation.

One senses that the President’s speeches, addresses and comments are now so pored over that someone, somewhere will take offence with something. He can’t please all of the people all of the time with all his speeches.

So with all the brouhaha involved with his speech, what were his last Thanksgiving words to the nation?

God bless you. From my family to yours, happy thanksgiving.

He might not be the cleric in chief, but these last words to his speech suggest there’s little real cause for concern.

We’ve come across speakers who’ve been barred from giving a speech. But in New York state there’s a former mayor of  Falls City Council, Matteo Anello, who’s determined to sue the Council…because he was barred from giving a speech.

OK, not so much barred as forcibly ejected from the Council chamber by a local police officer. He was two minutes into his speech when the Chairman of the Council, Robert Anderson, declared he “didn’t have the floor” and ordered him removed from the Council chamber.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the plucky Matteo Anello was then charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. All on the say so of the Council Chairman, Mr Anderson.

Council politics–it gives democracy a bad name.

The case has been grinding on for some time…over three years now. But the initiative is probably with Mr Anello whose charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest have already been thrown out by a judge.

The latest development involved Mr Anello handing over a copy of his speech to the judge and the defendants prior to their next court meeting. His hand-written speech is likely to be compelling evidence and will shed some light on why Mr Anderson had him ejected from the podium three years ago.

Mario Draghi might be new to his job as head of the European Central Bank. But his speech at the European Banking Congress in Frankfurt last week suggested calm consistency. The calm consistency one might expect from a former Goldman Sachs banker.

In fact, consistency was one of the main structural elements to the speech: continuity, consistency and credibility. He might be new to the role of president, but not to central banking.

His speech was solid and unremarkable. One might pick holes in his comments on inflation policy…one might even argue that they were disingenuous. But that’s another matter.

Long sentences characterised this speech to his audience of banking professionals and Eurocrats.

We were treated to:

We are more than one and a half years after the summit that launched the EFSF as part of a financial support package amounting to 750 billion euros or one trillion dollars; we are four months after the summit that decided to make the full EFSF guarantee volume available; and we are four weeks after the summit that agreed on leveraging of the resources by a factor of up to four or five and that declared the EFSF would be fully operational and that all its tools will be used in an effective way to ensure financial stability in the euro area.

That was probably the longest sentence in the speech. Thankfully jargon wasn’t a big feature. Yes, there was some banker jargon and terms not typically used on the high street…but this was the head of the European Central Bank and he certainly knew his audience.

We did pick up some old chestnuts, beloved of Euro-area politicians and officials. There was:

a much more robust economic governance of the union going forward.

and,

At the same time, and going forward,

and, of course…

sustainable growth

We also had one or two mixed metaphors that showed Mr Draghi’s speech writer was trying:

Generally, these economies have built enough financial, fiscal and external buffers to dampen international spillovers.

And his conclusion? A masterful piece of Euro-area oratory:

In spite of the current challenges faced by the global economy, we must resist temptation to resort to unilateral policies, and we must work together to ensure that the gains achieved are firmly secured for future generations.

Irresistible! It wasn’t exactly a call to arms…but this was a solid speech to a banking audience that has some work to do right now. And that’s more than many people have in Europe…

Karen Lewis, the President of the Chicago Teachers Union, has managed to upset nearly everyone with a recent speech in Seattle. The speech in question was to a Northwest Teaching for Social Justice audience.

The cause of the upset? Well, first of all she chose to mock the speech impediment of the Federal Government’s Education Secretary, Arne Duncan. That’s not a great idea at the best of times. And from a teacher, speaking at a public conference it’s a bad move.

But she also managed to alienate her audience with some ripe language. Language that suggested her speech wasn’t that well planned. For example, we heard:

I am the only black woman in the class of 1974 from Dartmouth College. Whoo. People are impressed – let me tell you, I spent those years smoking lots of weed – self-medicating. Self-medicating – thank you! [cheers] Sounds like you all did, too. [laughs and cheers] Oh, I’m sorry – there’s kids here. I wasn’t supposed to say that, right? [laughs] Too late!

Not the best form of words for anyone in a public position. But there was more. Pacing the stage she rambled on and on. Which is where she lost us…and her audience. No merit points for this speech.

Taking their cue from the Occupy Wall Street protestors, a small group of activists self-styled as Occupy Sesame Street, forced a break in Rupert Murdoch’s conference speech this week. Mr Murdoch, Chief Executive of News Corporation, was speaking on the subject of technology and public education when protestors interrupted his speech.

He was speaking at the National Summit on Education Reform in San Francisco when the Occupy Sesame Street activists began their protest about the privatization of public education. Their protest comprised a series of individuals standing up, holding a placard and shouting. For maximum effect, each protestor took it in turn to rise to their feet and make a protest from within the selective audience. As a form of rolling protest it seemed novel, if not effective.

It didn’t have much impact on the speaker. Mr Murdoch remained bemused by the unfolding spectacle in the auditorium. After some delay he continued with his speech once security guards had ejected the protestors.