Friday, October 29, 2010

The Self-Serving Manipulator

Appealing to greed and vanity, expert at false modesty, damning opponents with faint praise, misdirection, disingenuousness, dissembling, and sensing when he can get away with flat out lies. All well known traits of the demagogue.  But how many see it when it's employed? Ah, there's the rub.

In these times, when all America so needs to have the manipulation of the demagogue demonstrated, this, beginning at 8 minutes, is hard to surpass. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab68AjRMKmA
Note: Shakespeare composed Antony's speech as overly broad, not to be convincing to the Roman mob, but to reveal to the audience the machinations of demagogues .



and part 2 can be found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd9BLib8448&NR=1



This is the easiest to hear and most effective of all the versions I could find. The film version, starring Marlon Brando as Mark Antony, IMO is not as good a teaching aid.

Much appreciation to MTS for his suggestion to follow-up my earlier post  with this post.

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