Will Rogers talks to the bankers: keynote roast from 1924
On a tip from Boing Boing reader JayHavvic, I checked out this 1924 recording of Will Rogers keynoting at an annual bankers' convention, giving them the gears with as much gusto as, say, Colbert gave GW Bush. It's a must-listen.
The audio comes from 78Records, an excellent site with serious bandwidth problems. So I've uploaded a copy to the Internet Archive for easier downloading. MP3: Will Rogers Talks to the Bankers, VICTOR_45374-A (1924) (Thanks, JayHavvic!)
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Wow! The only thing that seems 84 years old is the audio quality.
Unfortunately, it seems some things may never change.
Speaking of handing bankers their ass, this exchange is priceless...
Naomi Klein Takes “Shock Doctrine” to Colbert Report
And ahead of today’s House vote on the $800 billion Wall Street bailout, journalist and Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein appeared on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report last night. Klein told host Stephen Colbert the bailout exemplifies how governments and corporations try to push through self-serving policies during moments of crisis.
Naomi Klein: “The problem is the Bush administration doesn’t really believe in the free market. They have invented no-risk capitalism, OK? So, they spend seven years just transferring public money into private hands. Their final act is taking private debt and transferring it into public hands.”
Stephen Colbert: “But aren’t you—it sounds like you’re just, you know, upset that you’re not a banker right now.”
Klein: “I think we’re all a little upset that we’re not bankers right now.”
Colbert: “Of course! But that’s our fault for not getting in on the game.”
Klein: “Yes. Here’s another example of disaster capitalism. After Hurricane Katrina, this is the classic example."
Colbert: “I remember it. I remember it. Yeah?”
Klein: “I was in New Orleans. I was working on this book at the time. The city was still underwater. Richard Baker, the Republican congressman, says, ‘We couldn’t clean out the public housing projects, but God did.’ They used a horrible disaster to push through this preexisting agenda that hey had. They don’t believe in public housing. You know what they believe in?”
Colbert: “My friend, they were just giving credit where credit is due.”
Klein: “What they believe in is getting poor people into houses they can’t afford, so that their friends can speculate on the money, and then they can bail them out."
- I ganked this from DemocracyNow.org here:
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/3/headlines#2
I moved to France a couple of weeks ago and have been trying to use Will Rogers as an example of people from my home state, Oklahoma. Unfortunately, I only get blank stares. Thanks for posting this! It's surprising how many people don't know who he was.
Awesome. I had no idea about him.
He's so refreshingly frank and blunt:
"I have been accused of being worried over this 'inflation.' I wasn't worried. I was just confused... When you are worried, you know what you are worried about, but when you are confused you don't know enough about a thing to be worried."
-Time article on recycling Will Rogers columns
Copies of his dailycolumns here.
Man, there are some awesome sound bites there. Someone make a mashup, quick!
"Excellent" audio sites don't put 8kbps audio in high-resolution packages.
#5: By excellent I think Cory was referring to the amount of content the guy has recorded and made available, at a significant cost in terms of his own time. I think you can cut him a little slack in terms of getting the technical details right.
JPhilby, the mp3 of Will Rogers that I downloaded from 78-Records was 128kbps. Admittedly, not high quality, but also, not 8kbps.
Were there other files on the site @ 8kbps?
holy schnikes!