Privatising Julius Caesar

Abstract

In the old days, politics took place on the stump — at the Forum or the Capitol, in public squares, market-places, at outdoor rallies, on whistlestops — wherever the politicians felt they could count on the populace to gather. But, since the advent of radio, and certainly since the growth of television, the site for most political gatherings has been the living-room. In the radiophonic thirties political oratory gave way to the fireside chat and, in the sixties and seventies, televised debates. Gradually, oratory dwindled into chit-chat, and rhetoric into glittering generalities.