A fine, fine job, "mates"!
Update: A thoughtful essay on character and leadership from Cubanology (H/T: Babalu).
Update II: "hubris - exaggerated pride or self-confidence"
Update III: Currency Lad has asked for a scroll certifying his status as an Honorary Virginian. Here it is!
Dang! That ain't it. Looks like my award certification software's got some kind of bug. Let me work on it, C.L., and I'll get back to you.
Thanks, Paco! I'll be writing to the appropriate authorities in Richmond for all the relevant documentation at the earliest opportunity. I'd like a frameable scroll of some kind, at least.
ReplyDeleteMy enemies' wombats slur again, eh? They were wild, unbranded wombats as I've pointed out time and time again!
ReplyDeleteThat's a great likeness, C.L.! Except that, somehow, I saw you as a woman rustler.
ReplyDelete;-p
Easy...the real Jess S.
ReplyDeleteWoman rustlers don't hunt wombats. Wombats eat woman rustlers. Only men hunt wombats. But honorary memberships for the two Aussies may fix a lot of these minor cultural misunderstandings between our nations. Mehaul of the Gold Coast Queensland Australia.
Paco, I disagree with the common orthodoxy that the Ubermessiah is a good speaker, a great orator.
ReplyDeleteYes, he has a barritone voice. The perfect voice for public speaking.
However, his oratory is empty. He simply strings along meaningless phrases; the fact that his audience appears to swallow them is more a comment on their desire to believe, than his powers of persuasion.
Great oratory has a purpose; the goal is to win a free audience to a particular cause, or course of action.
Yes, public speaking demands the use of rhetorical devices; but oratory employs these to a purpose, a course of action, urgently insisted upon by a determined intelligence.
It is not to bamboozle and hypnotize people and bend them to you sponsor's will. Ubermessiah's rhetorical goal is simply to hypnotize the vote. There is no substance.
Oratory is what Churchill, Napolean, Pericles, Caesar, Themistocles, and countless lesser known leaders, did.
Sly talking is what snake oil salesman, Elmer Gantry, and various other cheap-skaters, including Ubermessiah, do.
Let's not forget Ubermessiah is not his own man. He is George Soros's (White) House Boy.
Wimpy: I agree with you 100%. I once wrote, somewhere, that he put me in mind of "Chop Sticks" played on a cathedral organ.
ReplyDeletePaco,
ReplyDeleteLet me apologize for missing out one of the greatest pieces of modern oratory, the Gettysburg Address by a Mr. A. Lincoln. You might have read about him.
This has all the rhetorical devices and speechifying employed by Ubermessiah (but in only 272 words); however, it has serious purpose. Just like Pericles's funeral speech, it was a funeral speech.
This is what I mean about the difference between oratory and cheap-talk. Ubermessiah cheap-talks.
Yet another testimony to the efficacy of the Personalized Achievement Certificate Outputter!
ReplyDeleteAgain, thanks so much for the honour Paco. Honorary Virginian and being mentioned in the same sentence as the Currency Lad is a double honour.
ReplyDeleteDamn good thing Hickock's long dead, if'n y'asked me. Otherwise you boys'd be looking to buy yourselves some real estate - 3x3x6...
ReplyDeleteSB: ovalip
Excuse me?...