an audience of everyone

In class this week we've been discussing logical, emotional, and ethical appeal, and the vitality of all three in rhetoric. Furthermore, we've talked about the importance of knowing your audience, and how writing should be designed to get the best response out of this intended audience.
Obama's speech was directed primarily at students. I just asked my baby sister, a fifth grader this year, whether her class watched the speech. She showed me a bunch of papers she'd filled out in class about it, and explained that they'd spent a significant amount of time discussing the speech and how it applied to them.
The event was much less of a priority in my class; I didn't really watch it until just now. And it's very likely that our younger brother, though not here to defend himself, was more focused on his attractive student teacher. But my class as well as his watched the speech nonetheless, and it wasn't entirely over our heads. It was incredibly engaging. I anticipated to watch parts of it merely for the sake of this assignment, but ended up watching the whole video. The effect of its simplicity and familiarity is in the neighborhood of beautiful.
As my sister's class also discovered, it's entirely relatable. While President Obama gets a great deal of credit for bringing this to our attention, the essence of it is that the message is simple, the task is simple. Obama genuinely believes that each individual has something to offer to this country, and that finding that is a responsibility we have to ourselves. I was able to understand that, as well as my younger siblings, as well as our parents and teachers.