Re: Boris Johnson's persona
Bruce McMenomy <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.education.classics |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
On Jul 30, 2019, at 11:58 AM, Mark Davidson <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I suspect they get rather good at thinking on their feetzios. >> > > Perhaps you didn't read the full article. > > The whole point is that he *wasn't* thinking on his feet. The > unpreparedness, the spontaneity, the disorganisation, the memory lapses > were all an elaborate act. Nothing was real. > > Mark D. Indeed. The whole thing reminded me of a story about someone who had trained a gorilla to play golf. The gorilla teed off and whacked the ball 300 yards down to the green. The bystanders were suitably amazed. Then the fellow took the gorilla to the green, where it proceeded to whack it another 300 yards off, vaguely in the direction of the next green. A one-trick pony. Haec ubi dicta...while I'm no champion of Johnson, don't we all have a certain amount of material "in the can", so to speak, ready to roll at a moment's notice? At least most of the teachers I know do. The trick — and what seems to be the difference here — is that ideally we at least know which piece to trot out for a given occasion. But I'm sure that there are students of mine who have heard one or another of my Routine Spiels more than once. -- Bruce ********************************************* Bruce A. McMenomy, Ph.D. Scholars Online: Greek, Latin, and Literature [email protected] https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.scholarsonline.org%2F&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40LSV.UKY.EDU%7C98e4d637f17d4d34558908d7152a7ad1%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C1%7C637001144501263968&sdata=cbrjZdn3B6e7Xa7YCWrhippmUvyAvlySCTtCZ3Cfeyo%3D&reserved=0 *********************************************