Posted on 09/04/2011 2:48:29 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
Okay, I know that Glenn Beck really hates Woodrow Wilson but let us leave aside the politics to discuss this absolutely amazing AUDIO of Wilson speaking during the 1912 Presidential campaign. Three things really strike me about this audio:
1. Clarity. I can't believe how CLEAR this audio sounds keeping in mind when it was recorded which was 1912.
2. Wilson's speaking voice. I never realized that Wilson's voice was so clear. If he lived today, he could easily be a radio announcer. His voice is that good.
3. Wilson's accent. Although Woodrow Wilson spent his boyhood in the South (mostly Georgia and South Carolina) and never left the South until he attended Princeton, I can detect no trace of an accent in his voice. I do remember that in "How the States Got Their Shapes" it was contended that there was no southern accent until AFTER the Civil War. That could explain Wilson's lack of such an accent since he would have been influenced by the earlier way of talking in the South (he was born in 1856).
bump.
Probably a big help to his evil promulgation of fascism in America.
President Coolidge
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5puwTrLRhmw
This is a good one to.
Youtube has a good amount of videos.
The audio quality is quite good, the content sounded like typical lefty BS, so I didn’t listen long.
What does astonish me is that Wilson was born in 1856. Time flies so fast and life is so fleeting.
Boy isn't that the truth.
I read the blurb below the You Tube video, and I’m wondering where this guy came up with the audio. I’m wondering if it’s real. I don’t mean to be such a skeptice, but this type of thing can easily be created with scratchy record sound effects and a well-spoken imitator of earlier American speech and phrasing.
I found it odd that this recording, supposedly from 1912, had him saying, “...added to this element are a great many men.. and women... of noble character...” I didn’t know the “he or she” thing started until much later in the 20th Century. In the old days, all of mankind were generally referred to as “he.” Now, we see all the PC crap where everything has to acknowledge the female gender, so everyone is too darned busy saying junk like, “If he or she would like to join us...” Stupid, in my opinion (and I’m a woman).
I don’t know about the audio; I’m just sayin’...
There is a similar film with synchronized audio of Theodore Roosevelt speaking during that same campaign. TR had a high-pitched voice with a schoolmarmish, almost effeminate, method of speaking. I was surprised.
That is—Skeptic, not skeptice. Proofreading is our friend!
:-/
Not surprised at the quality of his voice or the cadence of it. He was a Princeton wussie who saw himself as part of the so-called intelligencia that knows so much more and so much better than everybody else which is a total farce.
He’s the asshat that ushered in the Federal Reserve, sorry I can’t put the politics aside.
I checked other audios of Wilson and he sounded the same.
Assuming that it is a real recording of Wilson, the accent could be explained by his working as a professor and the need to be heard. Frankly, people were better public speakers then. They also spoke for longer.
Face it. Whatever his politics, Wilson had a great speaking voice.
That is amazing audio quality as you said. Here is another recording of Calvin Coolidge and is message was as relevant then as it is now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5puwTrLRhmw&feature=related
bump
I did not say he didn’t have a great speaking voice. That was not my point at all, nor were his politics my point.
Most everyone from back then through the mid-20th Century spoke with fabulous speaking voices miles better than people nowadays. We listen to the old time radio shows every week, and I know how well everyone spoke back then.
I was only wondering about the source of the audio. I know the guy that put it on You Tube was apparently dubbing it from a commercial compact disc. No biggie at all.
The Federal Reserve is the least of Wilson’s sins.
1. He was an overt racist who fired most black federal employees.
2. He massively increased the size and scope of the federal government. Much of FDR’s New Deal team were from the Wilson Administration.
3. He dragged the country into The World War, when our staying out could have forced a peace of exhaustion and prevented the instability after the war.
4. He rebuffed an Austrian peace initiative that could have ended the war in 1917, and his “idealism” led to an unstable central Europe. His antics at the Versailles Conference are well known.
5. Having pushed for the League of Nations, he then crippled it by ham handedly insulting the Republicans he needed to get it passed.
In other words, his vocal rhythm and non-geographical accent sounded like one of the monied, academic/intellectual elites of the day.
Wilson was and is still known as an accomplished and eloquent orator.....but I doubt if I could sit sit through one of his speeches because of a certain dry robotic coldness accompanying a noticeable stifling of any passion.
The dramatics, histrionics, emotions and even some outright nasties in the speeches of many politicians in this day and age were not practiced by presidents in Wilson's era. They all sounded so veddy, veddy correct....but rather stilted to one degree or another......something we're not used to today.
Leni
Yes, he was a freakoid maniac akin to the dear leader we have now. Borderline evil. Maybe not even borderline.
Second Wilson in both his legal and Academic/Lecturer professions studied and practiced rhetoric. Rhetoric as a discipline in those days of such speakers as William Jennings Bryant, practiced clear enunciation and an educated accent that modeled a clipped Northeastern in style and intonation.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.