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The New York Times - July 21, 2006 Choosing America's Next Top Motivator in 'The Messengers'
By Alessandra Stanley
IN England, the art of public speaking is instilled in school. Here, it is learned in churches, Amway conventions and self-help retreats.
A sexually abused child raised on welfare can become a billionaire talk-show host, and a president who attended Andover, Yale and Harvard Business School can still have trouble completing a compound sentence. Americans don?t favor Oxford Union notions of stylish debate. The best speakers are called "motivational" and are self-taught and steeped in their own up-by-the-bootstraps myths.
And that is what fuels "The Messengers," a new reality show on the Learning Channel. It is an "American Idol"-style contest where the contestants are motivational speakers and eloquence is the only currency. Each week, the least articulate or persuasive orator is voted off the show by the studio audience.
Popular culture is all talk and no rhetoric. Presidential debates are bound and filleted, seemingly free-flowing talk shows are scripted down to the very last pronoun, and even railway stations are announced by recorded message. Yet until the invention of the cathode-ray tube, public speaking was the television of its time: instant communication put at the service of propaganda and mass entertainment.
Auditions for "The Messengers" were held around the country. The 10 finalists are sent out together on a weekly trip that is supposed to be character-forming or at least inspiring. In the premiere on Sunday, they spend 24 hours with the homeless of Los Angeles to gather material for a two-minute speech on the topic of charity, which they deliver in front of a studio audience. Each performance is critiqued by two so-called expert judges: Richard Greene, a communications coach, and Bobby Schuller, the son of and successor to Robert H. Schuller, of the Crystal Cathedral Ministries and its television show, "Hour of Power."
Both judges are surprisingly inarticulate (Mr. Greene tells one contestant, "Brilliant stuff, dude"), but some of the speakers have real talent. The results can be funny, irritating and at times quite thrilling, a spelling bee for adults.
The summer schedule is overpacked with overlapping contests. NBC?s "America?s Got Talent" is on at the same day and time as "So You Think You Can Dance" on Fox, as well as the CBS reality show "Rock Star: Supernova" and ABC?s "The One: Making a Music Star." "The Messengers" is as contrived and manipulative as any reality show, but it is shown on Sunday nights, and it celebrates a lost art.
The contestants were chosen for the same reasons as dinner guests or the participants on "Big Brother," an interesting mix. They include Cornelious (See) Flowers, a self-described "spoken-word artist" who combines hip-hop cool with a preacher?s hortatory style ("My benevolence has no relevance"); Angelica Osborne, an Alabama preacher?s daughter and apartment manager; and Kent Healy, a surfer and self-help guru from San Clemente, Calif. Their speaking styles are all quite different, even though Christianity is a common bond for many. Angelica tells stories that are amusing and also touching. Robert Rutherford, a pastor and construction worker, sounds a lot like Bill Clinton.
This is the latest series that marks TLC?s born-again educational mission. The network still carries some of the makeover reality shows that made it famous, like "Trading Spaces," but it has added shows that instruct more than they amuse, including "Shalom in the Home" and "Untold Stories of the ER." (Its new motto is "Live and Learn," whereas it used to be more of a "Stop & Shop" kind of place.)
Sending the contestants and camera crews to skid row could be as callously invasive as the worst Paris Hilton moments on E!?s "Simple Life," but TLC tries to soften the blow with night-vision cameras and grainy, washed-out film, and by keeping the contestants and crews as unobtrusive as possible.
Some of the homeless are nevertheless resentful at what could look a little like Marie Antoinette playing shepherdess at Le Petit Trianon. "We don?t have homes," a woman screams, banging her fist on a concrete wall. "You do." But as the night on cardboard boxes progresses, many of the street people warm to their attentive visitors. A fragile-looking man with a matted beard and oversized parka lectures on corporate America, noting that there is not a water fountain in sight, but a liquor store on every corner.
The finalists look and listen with the rapt humility of travelers with a 24-hour pass and a return ticket.
All 10 are pious and heartwarming (there are no "History Boys" contrarians in this group), yet the way they absorb the experience is telling. Darryl Van Leer, a substitute teacher and motivational speaker who models his cadences on those of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ("STAND UP for justice"), speaks of what the homeless taught him. Kent, the surfer, focuses on himself, saying that he was able to bring a homeless man to tears merely by telling him, "It?s never too late to be who you were meant to be."
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