Stephen Krupin, who served as senior speechwriter to former president Barack Obama, insists he believes in every speech he ever wrote while working at the White House, with one exception.
Writing in The Washington Post, Krupin revealed this week that he penned Obama’s speech praising the Pittsburgh Penguins for their 2016 Stanley Cup championship. And as a lifelong Washington Capitals fan, he feels terrible about it.
“Of course, to love the Caps is to live in a persistent state of anxiety,” he writes. “We know that a three-games-to-one lead in the playoffs is more curse than blessing, and we watch overtime periods through our fingers.”
Because the Penguins have “had our number eight of the nine times we’ve met them in the postseason,” Krupin admits that he hates the team.
The speechwriter, who teaches his craft at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, actually sought out the assignment before the winner had been decided. He’d hoped, he now admits, that the Capitals would be the ones making the trip to the White House.
Naturally, Krupin was less than thrilled when it was time for him to write the speech that Obama delivered last October, when Sidney Crosby and Co. made their trip to the White House.
Krupin explains what an awful process it was for him:
[blockquote]
As with any good speech, the process began with research. I clenched my jaw and read recaps of the Penguins’ remarkable turnaround season. I grew nauseous as I dug through fawning profiles about enemies of the state such as Matt Murray and accomplices such as Phil Kessel. I steeled myself for a conversation with Pittsburgh’s villainous front office, from whom I learned begrudgingly about the commendable deeds this contemptible team performed in the community, such as restoring city parks and making their facilities more energy efficient.
[cite]— The Washington Post[/cite]
[/blockquote]
Of course, Krupin couldn’t help but make a few jabs at the team he hates, including a joke about Evgeni Malkin, “who had been caught awkwardly snapping a camera-phone photo of the president during the team’s last visit to the East Room, in 2009.”
While Krupin’s coming clean in the Post seems like a form of penance, it’s clear that he still feels bad about all the nice things he wrote about the Penguins.
He writes: “There isn’t a Zamboni in the world that could make me feel clean again.”
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