Today’s M-TOPP: Mark Twain on Politics and Politicians
Congress, Whiskey, Demijohns and Demagogues
From: Mark Twain Notebook
“Whiskey is taken into the committee rooms in demijohns and carried out in demagogues.”
From: Roughing It
That was a fine collection of sovereigns, that first Nevada legislature. They levied taxes to the amount of thirty or forty thousand dollars and ordered expenditures to the extent of about a million. Yet they had their little periodical explosions of economy like all other bodies of the kind. A member proposed to save three dollars a day to the nation by dispensing with the Chaplain. And yet that short-sighted man needed the Chaplain more than any other member, perhaps, for he generally sat with his feet on his desk, eating raw turnips, during the morning prayer.
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“Suppose you were an idiot.
And suppose you were a Congressman.
But I’m repeating myself.”
– Mark Twain, A Biography
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“Whiskey is taken into the committee rooms in demijohns and carried out in demagogues.”
Mark Twain Notebook
Conor Cunneen is also author
What Mark Twain Learned Me ’bout Public Speakin’
“When I say I’ll learn (‘Teach’ is not in the river vocabulary) a man the river, I mean it. And you can depend on it, I’ll learn him or kill him.” Life on the Mississippi – Mark Twain
Utilizing a unique and memorable MARK TWAIN acronym, author Conor Cunneen demonstrates what the Dean of American Humorists learned him bout public speakin !
Message preparation
Audience research and knowledge
Relate to audience
Know your objective
Titter and humor wins the audience
Wait – The power of the Pause
Anecdotes connect
Involve, Inform, Inspire your audience
Narration and stagecraft.