Wednesday, April 1, 2009

A Blast from the Past: The Voice of William McKinley

The April Fools are holding their convention on the pages of the Rep today. More about that later.

In the meantime I Hate Canton this morning offers you a short audio tape of William McKinley delivering a speech from his famous Canton front porch during his 1896 presidential campaign.

The front porch, was disappeared from town a long time ago by an earlier generation of local bullies and know nothings who couldn't be bothered to keep up the home of the city's most illustrious resident. (If you can let the president's house rot, you can certainly tear down the Case Mansion in the dead of night). It's too bad on a lot of counts. If nothing else, the front porch could serve as a inspiration to other politicians to stay home.

McKinley sounds nothing like I expected him to sound. Granted, his voice is pure 19th century declamation recorded by primative technology by today's standards, but he sounds like FDR to me.






2 comments:

John E said...

Where do you find this stuff?

Marley Greiner said...

Actually, on this one I Hate Canton was looking for a film of McKinley's Canton Funeral. We were sure it was on YouTube, but found this instead, which we found rather fascinating. We could have posted the filming of Leon Czolgoz's execution. We think we will. After all, that's what the Rep bullies and thugs are into.