Page 53 - The Irony Board
P. 53
Into the Body
Fast talkers
Distort their
Depiction
With a thick
Plastering
Of fiction;
Slow talkers
Let your own
Conviction
Plug up all
The holes in
Their diction.
In this further fathoming of falsehood, two types of con artists
are identified. They correspond to McLuhan’s hot and cool media:
the former fill the senses totally, leaving no gaps for the percipient
to question; the latter give sketchy, highly-unresolved impressions
whose details are filled in by the audience’s imagination. Gluckman
presumes these variants of demagoguery work better in different
situations: fast talkers are convincing when their listeners need
reassurance, while slow talkers succeed with an audience already
receptive to their message.
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