The lion and the lamb: Demythologizing Franklin Roosevelt's fireside chats
We are accustomed to a characterization of Franklin Roosevelt’s legendary Fireside Chats as intimate exchanges between the president and the people. This essay argues that the Fireside Chats were a harsher, more castigatory rhetorical genre than such a characterization would allow. A content analysi...
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| Format: | text |
| Language: | English |
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Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University
2003
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| Online Access: | https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2815 https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4072/viewcontent/RPA__1_.pdf |
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| Institution: | Singapore Management University |
| Language: | English |
| Summary: | We are accustomed to a characterization of Franklin Roosevelt’s legendary Fireside Chats as intimate exchanges between the president and the people. This essay argues that the Fireside Chats were a harsher, more castigatory rhetorical genre than such a characterization would allow. A content analysis of the 27 Fireside Chats recorded in FDR’s Public Papers suggests that the Fireside Chats were, on a number of indices, far less intimate than have traditionally been supposed, and in fact among the more vitriolic and declamatory utterances of the 32nd president. The essay proceeds with a discussion of how this illusion of intimacy was created and perpetuated, and explores the implications of these findings for the nature of presidential oratory. |
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