Teacherly

Instead of establishing rapport, Dreiske distances us with her implicit condescension; her cool, measured, teacherly tone doesn't help matters, either.

While others take pains to reproduce Shawn's high, nervous stutter or his intense, anxious way of speaking, Shapiro--who looks nothing like Shawn--delivers this 90-minute piece in an easygoing, teacherly style that's the very antithesis of a New Yorker's hectic ways.

Many of the lyrics were borrowed more or less intact from a 1986 grade-school textbook on Illinois history, and Greenfield delivers them in an earnest, teacherly tone enlivened by the occasional quippy aside or funny forced rhyme ("moratorium" / "Santorum").