Lesson Plan on rhetoric using Martin Luther King?

Question

I am creating a lesson plan on rhetoric to show that how you use language to express yourself is as important (if not more) than your specific message.

I am using "I Have a Dream" because it is a masterpiece of rhetoric.

I am looking for either
1.) a parody speech, using the same powerful structure on a more inane topic (have a dream of no homework, I have a broccoli etc.) or
2.) a writing that expresses the same views but by using more bland, non-powerful language.

If you have any such thing, I would greatly appreciate it.

Answer 1

This may help: (It is a parody speech I found on-line--see link below)

"I Have A Parakeet"
by Martin Luther Keet, Jr,

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Delivered on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963. Source: Martin Luther Keet, Jr: The Peaceful Warrior, Pocket Books, NY 1968

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Parakeet slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity in birdcages. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that Parakeets are still not free.

One hundred years later, the life of the Parakeet is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation, caging, wing clipping, forced nesting, and the chains of discrimination from other Parrots. One hundred years later, the Parakeet lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Parakeet is still languishing in the corners of American pet shops and finds themselves an exile in their own land.

So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition. In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence with a feather from a bird, they were signing a promissory note to which every American Parakeet was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all Parakeets would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of flying. It is obvious today that America Parakeet has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Parakeet a bad check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.

So we have come to cash this check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Parakeet. This sweltering summer of the Parakeet's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Parakeet needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Parakeet is granted his citizenship rights.

The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my birds who perch on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the birdbath of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Parakeet community must not lead us to distrust of all white birds, for many of our white feathered friends, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot fly alone. And as we fly, we must make the pledge that we shall flock ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied with your cuttlebone?" we can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the bird nests of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Parakeet’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto cage to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Parakeet in Mississippi cannot vote and a Parakeet in New York believes it has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice gnaws down like a cuttlebone in a cage.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow and uncleanly cages. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of pet shop brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Africa, go back to Asia, go back to Central and South America, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities pet shops, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not waddle in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all Parakeets are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slave Parakeets and the sons of former petshop owners will be able to pearch together in a cage of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their feathers but by the content of their character and the duration of their flight. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's beak are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little colorful parakeets will be able to join hands with little monotone parakeets and fly together. I have a dream today.

This will be the day when all of God's birds will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, chirp chirp of thee, sweet land of parakeet prosperity, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the parakeet’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring." And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious perch tops of New Hampshire.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's birds, black and white, Jewakeet and Gentilekeet, Protestankeet and Catholickeet, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Parakeet spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we Parakeets are free at last!"

Good Luck....