20-12-2013, 03:37 PM
One of the earliest examples of big man/little man. There may be others even earlier, but you can see that this theme was in play back in December 1963:
Lee Oswald's indicated murder of Mr. Kennedy seems motivated only by his resentment against the most successful man in the world, resentment against a wonderfully intelligent, puissant, healthy, wealthy, witty and handsome man who was so rich in spirit that he made no attempt to conceal his superiority, who dominated the world and outer space, and who had an inexpressibly fine wife and two lovely children. From the view of this resentment, as long as this fellow stayed out of Lee Oswald's path he would be all right, but when he came laughing into Dallas, and the newspapers printed a map that showed he would drive right past where Lee Oswald worked for a lousy fifty bucks a week, it was more than this classical resentment could bear.
It takes time to achieve such resentment and to fire it there must be careful nurturing by constant unrelenting conditioning to violence. Oswald was not the only violence-packed American who was capable of murdering President Kennedy. The assassination was a wasteful, impersonal, senseless act, but the United States has undergone such a massive brainwashing to violence that such a senseless waste is á la mode.
Manchurian Candidate' in Dallas Richard Condon The Nation, 28 December 1963
This is the same Richard Condon who later wrote Winter Kills, where the Oswald character is clearly a patsy who only brought the rifle into the building.
Lee Oswald's indicated murder of Mr. Kennedy seems motivated only by his resentment against the most successful man in the world, resentment against a wonderfully intelligent, puissant, healthy, wealthy, witty and handsome man who was so rich in spirit that he made no attempt to conceal his superiority, who dominated the world and outer space, and who had an inexpressibly fine wife and two lovely children. From the view of this resentment, as long as this fellow stayed out of Lee Oswald's path he would be all right, but when he came laughing into Dallas, and the newspapers printed a map that showed he would drive right past where Lee Oswald worked for a lousy fifty bucks a week, it was more than this classical resentment could bear.
It takes time to achieve such resentment and to fire it there must be careful nurturing by constant unrelenting conditioning to violence. Oswald was not the only violence-packed American who was capable of murdering President Kennedy. The assassination was a wasteful, impersonal, senseless act, but the United States has undergone such a massive brainwashing to violence that such a senseless waste is á la mode.
Manchurian Candidate' in Dallas Richard Condon The Nation, 28 December 1963
This is the same Richard Condon who later wrote Winter Kills, where the Oswald character is clearly a patsy who only brought the rifle into the building.