This is hilarious…ONCE again proving that ALL Fox news readers collectively have an IQ less than a bag of hammers…

Amazing that this kind of filler actually goes on the air…

… recently, however, the significance of the theatrical and the spectacular in everyday life in the ancient world has earned a keener appreciation among Roman historians, both of politics and art history.10 In particular, spectacle is now recognised as a key element in the articulation of social relations between the Roman élite and its dependants, be they the urban plebs or provincials across the Empire (e.g. Yakobson 1992; Lintott 1993: 175-85). The current fashion for studying the theatrical and spectacular the Roman world should not be misconstrued as some sort of “Gladiator-effect”. It roots are grounded in the proliferation of new approaches to the study of the ancient world.

With the advent of the principate, the provision of spectacles at the city of Rome became the preserve of the emperors. Such games were no more simple acts of generosity now than they had been in the late Republic. That most famous of Roman spectacular venues, the Colosseum, epitomizes the phenomenon. It was begun by Vespasian and dedicated by Titus, the first two emperors of the Flavian dynasty that swept to power in the civil wars of AD 68-69. More importantly, it was built on the site of the private gardens of Nero’s Golden House. The significance of this transformation was not lost on contemporaries (Martial, Spectacula 1. 2; Suetonius Vespasian 9). Where once the tyrant Nero indulged his private whims, now the new dynasty enchanted the public with spectacles on a scale beyond their wildest expectations. … As with the triumvirs and Augustus, so with Vespasian and Titus the provision of entertainments helped to secure power and legitimation.

Spectacle, of course, was not simply a case of providing entertainments; they had to provoke a favourable reaction too, as Nero found out to his cost when he publicly persecuted the Christians after the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64 (Tacitus, Annals 15. 44). Recent studies, sensitive to this fact, have sought to bring to light evidence for the interaction between the providers of spectacles and the audiences to which they appealed (Aldrete 1999; Lim 1999). The evidence is scattered and, with the exception of graffiti (Gregori 2001), rarely gives us direct access to the minds of the spectators themselves. But such material is beginning to show Roman historians of other periods something that their colleagues working on late antiquity have known for some time from the evidence of acclamations at Aphrodisias in Caria (Roueché 1984): responses to spectacles, whether in venues for the games or in the street, were often loud and agitated. In turn, these approaches have yielded useful data for the role spectacle played in political life at Rome. Recent work on political oratory at late-Republican and imperial Rome has exploited this research on the mechanics of spectacle in the Roman world. It emphasizes the need to appreciate the visual as well as verbally rhetorical devices employed by orators haranguing the people. Words were important, of course; but so too were the gestures and postures adopted by the speakers, as well as the physical locations in which speeches were delivered (Aldrete 1999; Vasaly 1993). From works such as these comes affirmation that political and social life in the Roman world involved not only the intellect, but also the senses.

Well, perhaps you get the idea. Faux Nooz was in cahoots with the Bush administration to foster the “reality” being created for the hoi polloi. The “media” helped the public to understand what was important, who were the good guys and the bad guys, and how the games were to be played. Above all, “News” ceased to be about providing information and became instead a means of manipulating public opinion.

Bob in HI

it takes one to know one!

The pot is calling the kettle black.

Bob in HI

Independent Lens: “A Dream in Doubt”
“A Dream in Doubt” examines hate crimes against minorities in the U.S. after the Sept. 11 attacks, including the shooting death of Balbir Singh Sodhi …

Diary of the Maniacally Stupid, Fourth Edition

- Tom