Mary Robinson has made a career of plain talking. It's the kind of talk so clear, so honest, so adiplomatic, one wonders why how it is she rose to the top of Irish and then world politics, as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Her plain talk won her fans around the world, as well as many enemies, including the US government, who are widely seen as having forced her resignation from the UN post. Why is she such an effective communicator? Because she has a gift for taking abstract, amorphous world issues, such as the rights of the child, and putting them in terms even a dunce like me can understand. Metaphors like, "Over 30'000 children die every day of preventable causes. That's a silent tsunami every 5 days" really bring it home.
She's a hero. And she has a real pretty voice too.