Posted on 11/13/2008 10:56:48 AM PST by autumnraine
The key to understanding the tragedy that was Jonestown lies in the oratory skills of the Peoples Temple founder, Jim Jones.
"He was very charismatic," Leslie Wagner-Wilson, a Jonestown survivor, says of the Rev. Jim Jones.
With the cadence and fervor of a Baptist preacher, the charm and folksiness of a country storyteller and the zeal and fury of a maniacal dictator, Jones exhorted his followers to a fever pitch, audiotapes recovered from Jonestown reveal.
As he spoke, they applauded, shouted, cheered. One follower who survived the "revolutionary suicide" at Jonestown on November 18, 1978, said that Jones was the most dynamic speaker he had ever heard.
Like all powerful speakers, Jones' greatest asset was his ability to determine what listeners wanted to hear and give it to them in simple language that appealed to them on an almost instinctual level.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
The money quote:
“He could quote scripture and turn around and preach socialism,” she said. “He appealed to anyone on any level at any time.”
...and a gracious guest host, too..............;^\
That cadence-Were have I heard that recently-thinking.....
And the dems are drinking the kool-aid.
I’ve never thought that Obama was a great speaker, and his lately acquired, phony, homeboy accent was annoying and insulting, as it should have been to African-Americans.
Is there any doubt CNN may have lost their seat on the Obama plane if they ran this story 2 weeks ago? Why now? Good timing CNN.
No. Why?
You forgot that many white people voted for Obama because they “thought it was great to have a black (mullatto) man as President...
young people think he is “cool”.
“I’ve never thought that Obama was a great speaker....”
unless you think stilted, halting and leaden are positive adjectives
The thing I don’t get is why people think Obama is a good speaker. I suppose he’s average at reading the teleprompter, but he sounds totally clueless when he’s speaking off the cuff. Why do people always say he’s a great speaker?
Hitler was a great orator.
Watch film of him firing up the troops or brown shirts and the folks went wild.
And a whole lot more folks got themselves killed listening to him.
Simple. Because you always have to find everything that he does is great.
Not the young people I have spoken to. They apparently can see right thru him. Most think he's a fraud..................
“there I said it.”
You’re right, but that’s not the whole story. If that’s all it took, Jesse Jackson, or Al Sharpton would have been president already.
Obama has spent a lifetime studying whites like a tiger studies prey. Obama learned how to package himself to appeal to a broad range of people. And, when Obama reads a prompter, he is a very good speaker, and does have that preacher cadence.
That is what put him over the top. But yes, most of those who voted for him did so with the reasons you list at the forefront.
Wow! If you read the article, you would find that every reason you have given they voted for Obama is the reason that they went with Jim Jones.
Seriously, read it.
I recently saw a special on the History Channel on cults, with special mention for Jim Jones. I was shocked beyond belief that they admitted his dictatorship arose out of his socialistic ideals! The other striking thing I noted is that all these charismatic cult leaders shared many historical commonalities with Obama: Manson, Jones, Hitler, and Koresh (I believe), all had absent or abusive fathers and nearly all had absent mothers. It was more than a little creepy to watch. And the section on Jonestown was simply heartbreaking!
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