I'm not a crook.

Who is speaking? Former President Richard Nixon.

Why was/is the speech important to society? It was a HUGE scandal at the time (1973) and this was Nixon's chance to defend himself to the American people to insist that he had not made any profit from his public service.

Why do you feel this is important or interesting? A lot of people during his time thought that Nixon was a fraud and a crook - hearing his side is a little ironic.

What is the emotion, mood, tone, personality, feeling of the speech? It was an hour-long televised question and answer session by the President. He seems tense and misspoken, but kept insisting his innocent standing on the Watergate scandal. He acknowledged he made a mistake in not supervising the campaign activities closer. It feels like a plead. There's a sense of guilt in his voice.

What is intonation, emphasis, what is loud, stressed, or soft. Where are there pauses...
What do you FEEL should be loud or soft, long pause or rushed? Loud="I have earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life I have never obstructed justice." "I've earned everything I've got." Soft= The parts about how he got the money to pay for the things he did. Paused= "So that's where the money came from." "I made my mistakes. But in all my years in public life... public service. I've earned every cent. I've never obstructed justice." "I'm not a crook."

Is there a call to action? When listening to it what are key/emphasized words? His call to action is to assure America he is not a crook.

How does it make you feel? It makes me feel a little uncomfortable. I feel like he is apologizing to me personally, when really I wasn't alive at the time.

How do you imagine that the audience felt? I bet some (Democrats, maybe?) were all for it, trying to convince everyone that he was a good President. I'm sure others just laughed at it the whole time.

Write/find a short bio, of the person giving the speech.

In the presidential election of 1972, Nixon and Agnew ran against Democrats George McGovern (1922–) and Sargent Shriver (1915–). The election was a landslide for Nixon, but no one was expecting what would happen next. During his last election campaign, what first appeared as a minor burglary was to become the beginning of the end of Nixon's political career. A break-in at Democratic national headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex in Washington, D.C., was linked to Republicans.

During the trial of six men charged in the crime, the existence of the cover-up began to emerge and government officials fell like dominos in its path. By October 1973, as the Watergate investigation continued, Nixon lost several top aides as well as his vice president. Agnew resigned before pleading no contest to federal charges of receiving bribes, failing to pay his taxes properly, and other crimes while serving as governor of Maryland.

Soon the U.S. Supreme Court forced Nixon to turn over tape recordings he made during the election. The tapes showed he obstructed, or blocked, justice in stopping a Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) probe of the Watergate burglary. On August 9, 1974, in national disgrace, he became the first president of the United States to choose to leave office before the end of his term. He boarded a plane with his wife and returned to his California home, ending his public career. A month later, in a controversial move, President Gerald Ford (1913–) issued an unconditional pardon for any offenses Nixon might have committed while president.