THE PRESS IS GOOD OR EVIL ACCORDING TO ITS OWNER’S CHARACTER
The era of right-wing propagandistic media is doing its damage.
The written out verse for easier reading.
THE PRESS IS GOOD OR EVIL ACCORDING TO ITS OWNER’S CHARACTER
Today the so-called conservative press is in the tank for billionaires,
How could we expect an Australian billionaire to have scruples,
Each and every one who listens to this propaganda is *ucked.
People, enough of us, are too trusting, too very gullible,
Radicalized Republicans have a different meaning than of 1860,
Each day we ponder what if so and so wasn’t so hoodwinked,
So this is our America of today, actual facts can’t be discussed,
Somehow we sit and only watch our country further deteriorate.
Indeed - they are totally fooled by Trump and his acolytes,
So the right wing think-tanks have them all figured out.
Government hating has been the affliction they’ve all bit on,
Only to the most extreme spitefulness does it vary now,
Of millions who find a mythical scapegoat that they crave,
Democracy is hated by the billionaires, and their influence is large.
Of the well paid right wing influencers who sit on Twitter,
Religious folks (so they say) who live by only means of deceit.
Everyone who understands the big picture sees only things worsening,
Villainy now does not register to many of these folks,
Is there a chance that some will develop a conscious in time,
Lib-owning is their new opiate of all their suckered masses.
And outlets like Fox ‘News’ and Newsmax pump poison into brains,
Certainly investing some of their tax cut money into the big scam,
Circulating conspiracy theories about George Soros,
Oh yes, there are millions who have had their minds taken hostage,
Realize that some are loved by us, but more aptly we feel pity,
Democracy in the country has weakened substantially; we know,
In our family, neighbors, fellow citizens are people totally detached,
Now their understanding of reality has been hammered so askew,
Gone from reality are many, there’s only so much we can do.
Trump is such a ridiculous person yet they believe his shit,
On this day in March he threatens our nation; they’re down with it.
It might seem that the brainwashed masses will only remain,
Trump can do the billionaires’ wanted hit job on our nation,
So it’s up to us to vote and prevent the complete collapse.
Owners, there are many sociopathic owners pushing us toward the cliff,
With each passing day, the severity of the problem is ignored,
Nothing will doom us faster than Trump being reinstalled,
Each of the billionaire types haven’t completely thought this through,
Realize that these sheltered fools haven’t a clue about what they’re doing,
‘Every great mistake has a halfway moment…’ — Pearl S. Buck,
So we are in peril partly due only to naked propaganda.
Conservative media is what they wish to still call it,
How they’ve had to bend themselves so much to still believe it,
As they don’t believe any actual news anymore regardless,
Reality indicates that eventually something will suddenly collapse,
And the billionaire funded propaganda will eventually die,
Certainly if a sense of morality might actually arise in it all,
Trump will try to be used, hence there can be no sense of morality,
Each consideration of morality will not buy a larger yacht,
Regardless of what happens, they’re still good people fighting.
“The press is good or evil according to the character of those who direct it. - It is a mill that grinds all that is put into its hopper.-- Fill the hopper with poisoned grain and it will grind it to meal, but there is death in the bread.”
- Bryant.
William Cullen Bryant (November 3, 1794 – June 12, 1878) was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post. Born in Massachusetts, he started his career as a lawyer but showed an interest in poetry early in his life. An early supporter of organized labor, with his 1836 editorials asserting the right of workmen to strike, Bryant also defended religious minorities and immigrants, and promoted the abolition of slavery. He "threw himself into the foreground of the battle for human rights" and did not cease speaking out against the corrupting influence of certain bankers in spite of their efforts to break down the paper.
* “Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.” — Pearl S. Buck
Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker Buck (June 26, 1892 – March 6, 1973) was an American writer and novelist.
“In these times we fight for ideas, and newspapers are our fortresses.”
- Heine.
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (born Harry Heine; 13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was a German poet, writer and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder (art songs) by composers such as Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert. Heine's later verse and prose are distinguished by their satirical wit and irony. He is considered a member of the Young Germany movement. His radical political views led to many of his works being banned by German authorities—which, however, only added to his fame. He spent the last 25 years of his life as an expatriate in Paris.
“Newspapers should be news-carriers, not news-makers. — There is truth and entertainment enough to print, without fiction or falsehood, and to publish the latter is to betray the former.”
- C. Simmons.
Charles Simmons (1798–1856) was an American clergyman and author. His notable publications include Slavery of the United States to sinful and foolish custom, A Scripture manual, alphabetically and systematically arranged, designed to facilitate the finding of proof texts, and A laconic manual and brief remarker containing over a thousand subjects, alphabetically and systematically arranged.
This is a selection of what a “right-wing press” brought up on Twitter (X).
Two other quotes on ‘newspapers’ which I found interesting.
“The newspaper is the great educator of the nineteenth century. There is no force compared with it. It is book, pulpit, platform, forum, all in one. And there is not an interest - religious, literary, commercial, scientific, agricultural, or mechanical -that is not within its grasp. All our churches, and schools, and colleges, and asylums, and art galleries feel the quaking of the printing press.”
– Talmage.
Thomas De Witt Talmage (January 7, 1832 – April 12, 1902) was a preacher, clergyman and divine in the United States who held pastorates in the Reformed Church in America and Presbyterian Church. He was one of the most prominent religious leaders in the United States during the mid- to late-19th century, equaled as a pulpit orator perhaps only by Henry Ward Beecher. He also preached to crowds in England. During the 1860s and 70s, Talmage was a well-known reformer in New York City and was often involved in crusades against vice and crime. Despite his being called a "pulpit clown" and "mountebank" for his sensational sermons, Talmage attracted a growing audience. The church could no longer seat everyone who attended. Larger and wealthier congregations began to recruit him and in 1869, Talmage accepted an offer from the Central Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, New York.
“Newspapers are the world's cyclopædia of life; telling us everything from every quarter of the globe. They are a universal whispering gallery for mankind, only their whispers are sometimes thunders.”
— Tryon Edwards.
Tryon Edwards (7 August 1809, Hartford, Conn. – 4 January 1894, Detroit, Mich.)[1] was an American theologian, minister of the Second Congregational Church in New London, Connecticut, from 1845 to 1857, after having served in Rochester, New York. He was best known for his collection of quotations, A Dictionary of Thoughts,[2] a book of quotations, for his compilation of the sixteen sermons of his great grandfather, Jonathan Edwards, on 1 Corinthians 13 as Charity And Its Fruits; Christian love as manifested in the heart and life, and for his edition of the works of his grandfather, Jonathan Edwards (the younger) (in 1842). Edwards wrote: "Thoughts become words, words become deeds, deeds become habits, habits become character, and character becomes destiny. Therefore watch the thoughts of your mind with the sleepless eye of your mind."
As promised another verse, somewhat in the form of a sonnet.
The blunted instrument
All presses are not created equally,
Entertaining views must always be in store,
Give me the sixties - when it all was a bore,
Today the lying strikes us uneasily,
Folks don’t care about things going legally,
Now with all their absurd hubris at our door,
Fear has gotten to them to their very core,
Manipulated by their press sneakily.
Fox ‘News’ is very far from actual news,
Newsmax is a much more blunted instrument,
All steering toward fascism in increments,
America sustaining its nasty bruise,
If we really are looked after by our God,
It is time to show much more than a facade.
Some writing on ‘newspaper ethics’ from the 1870s, which I found worthy of including today. I suggest you read it with the possible similarities today to keep in mind.
ARS RECTE VIVENDI
BEING ESSAYS CONTRIBUTED TO "THE EASY CHAIR"
By George William Curtis
George William Curtis (February 24, 1824 – August 31, 1892) was an American writer, reformer, public speaker, and political activist. He was an abolitionist and supporter of civil rights for African Americans and Native Americans. He also advocated women's suffrage, civil service reform, and public education.
NEWSPAPER ETHICS
I
Newspaper manners and morals hardly fall into the category of minor manners and morals, which are supposed to be the especial care of the Easy Chair, but there are frequent texts upon which the preacher might dilate, and push a discourse upon the subject even to the fifteenthly. Indeed, in this hot time of an opening election campaign, the stress of the contest is so severe that the first condition of a good newspaper is sometimes frightfully maltreated. The first duty of a newspaper is to tell the news; to tell it fairly, honestly, and accurately, which are here only differing aspects of the same adverb. "Cooking the news" is the worst use to which cooking and news can be put. The old divine spoke truly, if with exceeding care, in saying, "It has been sometimes observed that men will lie." So it has been sometimes suspected that newspapers will cook the news.
A courteous interviewer called upon a gentleman to obtain his opinions, let us say, upon the smelt fishery. After the usual civilities upon such occasions, the interviewer remarked, with conscious pride: "The paper that I represent and you, sir, do not agree upon the great smelt question. But it is a newspaper. It prints the facts. It does not pervert them for its own purpose, and it finds its account in it. You may be sure that whatever you may say will be reproduced exactly as you say it. This is the news department. Meanwhile the editorial department will make such comments upon the news as it chooses." This was fair, and the interviewer kept his word. The opinions might be editorially ridiculed from the other smelt point of view, and they probably were so. But the reader of the paper could judge between the opinion and the comment.
Now an interview is no more news than much else that is printed in a paper, and it is no more pardonable to misrepresent other facts than to distort the opinions of the victim of an interview. Yet it has been possible at times to read in the newspapers of the same day accounts of the same proceedings of--of--let us say, as this is election time--of a political convention. The _Banner_ informs us that the spirit was unmistakable, and the opinion most decided in favor of Jones. True, the convention voted, by nine hundred to four, for Smith, but there is no doubt that Jones is the name written on the popular heart. The _Standard_, on the other hand, proclaims that the popular heart is engraved all over with the inspiring name of Smith, and that it is impossible to find any trace of feeling for Jones, except, possibly, in the case of one delegate, who is probably an idiot or a lunatic. This is gravely served up as news, and the papers pay for it. They even hire men to write this, and pay them for it. How Ude and Careme* would have disdained this kind of cookery! It is questionable whether hanging is not a better use to put a man to than cooking news. Sir Henry Wotton** defined an ambassador as an honest man sent to lie abroad for the commonwealth. This kind of purveyor, however, does not lie for his country, but for a party or a person.
***
*Louis-Eustache Ude, (ca 1768 – 10 April 1846), chef and writer, was the best-known French chef in London before Alexis Soyer, and the author of an influential cookery book, The French Cook, first published in 1813 with thirteen new editions following over the next three decades.
**Sir Henry Wotton (30 March 1568 – December 1639) was an English author, diplomat and politician who sat in the House of Commons in 1614 and 1625. When on a mission to Augsburg, in 1604, he famously said, "An ambassador is an honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country".
***
It is done with a purpose, the purpose of influencing other action. It is intended to swell the paean* for Jones or for Smith, and to procure results under false pretences. Procuring goods under false pretences is a crime, but everybody is supposed to read the newspapers at his own risk. Has the reader yet to learn that newspapers are very human? A paper, for instance, takes a position upon the Jones or Smith question. It decides, upon all the information it can obtain, and by its own deliberate judgment, that Jones is the coming man, or ("it has been observed that men will sometimes lie") it has illicit reasons for the success of Smith. Having thus taken its course, it cooks all the news upon the Smith and Jones controversy, in order that by encouraging the Jonesites or the Smithians, according to the color that it wears, it may promote the success of the side upon which its opinion has been staked. It is a ludicrous and desperate game, but it is certainly not the honest collection and diffusion of news. It is a losing game also, because, whatever the sympathies of the reader, he does not care to be foolishly deceived about the situation. If he is told day after day that Smith is immensely ahead and has a clear field, he is terribly shaken by the shock of learning at the final moment that he has been cheated from the beginning, and that poor Smith is dead upon the field of dishonor.
*a song of praise or triumph. "a paean of praise for the great poets" - a thing that expresses enthusiastic praise.
Everybody is willing to undertake everybody else's business, and an Easy Chair naturally supposes, therefore, that it could show the able editor a plan of securing and retaining a large audience. The plan would be that described by the urbane reporter as the plan of his own paper. It is nothing else than truth-telling in the news column, and the peremptory punishment of all criminals who cook the news, and "write up" the situation, not as it is, but as the paper wishes it to be. This is more than an affair of the private wishes or preferences of the paper. To cook the news is a public wrong, and a violation of the moral contract which the newspaper makes with the public to supply the news, and to use every reasonable effort to obtain it, not to manufacture it, either in the office or by correspondence.
(_July_, 1880)
II
If, as a New York paper recently said, the journalist is superseding the orator, it is full time for the work upon _Journals and Journalism_, which has been lately issued in London. The New York writer holds that in our political contests the "campaign speech" is not intended or adapted to persuade or convert opponents, but merely to stimulate and encourage friends. The party meetings on each side, he thinks, are composed of partisans, and the more extravagant the assertion and the more unsparing the denunciation of "the enemy," the more rapturous the enthusiasm of the audience. In fact, his theory of campaign speeches is that they are merely the addresses of generals to their armies on the eve of battle, which are not arguments, since argument is not needed, but mere urgent appeals to party feeling. "Thirty centuries look down from yonder Pyramid" is the Napoleonic tone of the campaign speech.
As an election is an appeal to the final tribunal of the popular judgment, the apparent object of election oratory is to affect the popular decision. But this, the journalist asserts, is not done by the orator, for the reason just stated, but by the journal. The newspaper addresses the voter, not with rhetorical periods and vapid declamation, but with facts and figures and arguments which the voter can verify and ponder at his leisure, and not under the excitement or the tedium of a spoken harangue. The newspaper, also, unless it be a mere party "organ," is candid to the other side, and states the situation fairly. Moreover, the exigencies of a daily issue and of great space to fill produce a fulness and variety of information and of argument which are really the source of most of the speeches, so that the orator repeats to his audience an imperfect abstract of a complete and ample plea, and the orator, it is asserted, would often serve his cause infinitely better by reading a carefully written newspaper article than by pouring out his loose and illogical declamation.
But the argument for the newspaper can be pushed still further. Since phonographic reporting has become universal, and the speaker is conscious that his very words will be spread the next morning before hundreds of thousands of readers, it is of those readers, and not of the thousand hearers before him, of whom he thinks, and for whom his address is really prepared. Formerly a single charge was all that was needed for the fusillade of a whole political campaign. The speech that was originally carefully prepared was known practically only to the audience that heard it. It grew better and brighter with the attrition of repeated delivery, and was fresh and new to every new audience. But now, when delivered to an audience, it is spoken to the whole country. It is often in type before it is uttered, so that the orator is in fact repeating the article of to-morrow morning. The result is good so far as it compels him to precision of statement, but it inevitably suggests the question whether the newspaper is not correct in its assertion that the great object of the oration is accomplished not by the orator, but by the writer.
But this, after all, is like asking whether a chromo copy of a great picture does not supersede painting, and prove it to be an antiquated or obsolete art. Oratory is an art, and its peculiar charm and power cannot be superseded by any other art. Great orations are now prepared with care, and may be printed word for word. But the reading cannot produce the impression of the hearing. We can all read the words that Webster spoke on Bunker Hill at the laying of the corner-stone of the monument fifty years after the battle.* But those who saw him standing there, in his majestic prime, and speaking to that vast throng, heard and saw and felt something that we cannot know. The ordinary stump speech which imperfectly echoes a leading article can well be spared. But the speech of an orator still remains a work of art, the words of which may be accurately lithographed, while the spirit and glow and inspiration of utterance which made it a work of art cannot be reproduced.
***
*[Part of the Speech] It has been said with much vivacity, that the felicity of the American colonists consisted in their escape from the past. This is true so far as respects political establishments, but no farther. They brought with them a full portion of all the riches of the past, in science, in art, in morals, religion, and literature. The Bible came with them. And it is not to be doubted, that to the free and universal reading of the Bible, in that age, men were much indebted for right views of civil liberty. The Bible is a book of faith, and a book of doctrine, and a book of morals, and a book of religion, of especial revelation from God; but it is also a book which teaches man his own individual responsibility, his own dignity, and his equality with his fellow-man.
Bacon and Locke, and Shakespeare and Milton, also came-with the colonists. It was the object of the first settlers to form new political systems, but all that belonged to cultivated man, to family, to neighborhood, to social relations, accompanied them. In the Doric phrase of one of our own historians, "they came to settle on bare creation; but their settlement in the wilderness, nevertheless, was not a lodgement of nomadic tribes, a mere resting-place of roaming savages. It was the beginning of a permanent community, the fixed residence of cultivated men. Not only was English literature read, but English, good English, was spoken and written, before the axe had made way to let in the sun upon the habitations and fields of Plymouth and Massachusetts. And whatever may be said to the contrary, a correct use of the English language is, at this day, more general throughout the United States, than it is throughout England herself.
***
The general statement of the critic, however, remains true, and the effective work of a political campaign is certainly done by the newspaper. The newspaper is of two kinds, again--that which shows exclusively the virtue and advantage of the party it favors, and that which aims to be judicial and impartial. The tendency of the first kind is obvious enough, but that of the last is not less positive if less obvious. The tendency of the independent newspaper is to good-natured indifference. The very ardor, often intemperate and indiscreet, with which a side is advocated, prejudices such a paper against the cause itself. Because the hot orator exclaims that the success of the adversary would ruin the country, the independent Mentor gayly suggests that the country is not so easily ruined, and that such an argument is a reason for voting against the orator. The position that in a party contest it is six on one side and half a dozen on the other is too much akin to the doctrine that naught is everything and everything is naught to be very persuasive with men who are really in earnest. Such a position in public affairs inevitably, and often very unjustly to them, produces an impression of want of hearty conviction, which paralyzes influence as effectually as the evident prejudice and partiality of the party advocate. Thorough independence is perfectly compatible with the strongest conviction that the public welfare will be best promoted by the success of this or that party. Such independence criticises its own party and partisans, but it would not have wavered in the support of the Revolution because Gates and Conway* were intriguers, and Charles Lee** an adventurer, and it would have sustained Sir Robert Walpole*** although he would not repeal the Corporation and Test laws,**** and withdrew his excise act.
***
*The Conway Cabal was a group of senior Continental Army officers in late 1777 and early 1778 who aimed to have George Washington replaced as commander-in-chief of the Army during the American Revolutionary War. It was named after Brigadier General Thomas Conway, whose letters criticizing Washington were forwarded to the Second Continental Congress. When these suggestions (which were often little more than criticisms and expressions of discontent with either Washington or the general course of the war) were made public, supporters of Washington mobilized to assist him politically. Conway ended up resigning from the army, and General Horatio Gates, a leading candidate to replace Washington, issued an apology for his role in events.
**Charles Lee (6 February 1732 – 2 October 1782) was a British-born American military officer who served as a general of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He also served earlier in the British Army during the Seven Years War. He sold his commission after the Seven Years War and served for a time in the Polish army of King Stanislaus II Augustus.
***Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG, PC (26 August 1676 – 18 March 1745), known between 1725 and 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman and Whig politician who, as First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Leader of the House of Commons, is generally regarded as the de facto first Prime Minister of Great Britain.
****The Corporation Act of 1661 excluded from membership of town corporations all those who were not prepared to take the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. The Test Act passed in 1673 imposed the same test upon holders of civil or military office. Roman Catholics, Protestant Dissenters and followers of the Jewish faith were therefore excluded from public office.
***
Journalism, if it be true that it really shapes the policy of nations, well deserves to be treated as thoughtfully as Mr. "John Oldcastle"* apparently treats it in the book we have mentioned, for it is the most exacting of professions in the ready use of various knowledge. Mr. Anthony Trollope** says that anybody can set up the business or profession of literature who can command a room, a table, and pen, ink, and paper. Would he also say that any man may set up the trade of an artist who can buy an easel, a palette, a few brushes, and some colors? It can be done, indeed, but only as a man who can hire a boat may set up for an East India merchant.
***
*Sir John Oldcastle (died 14 December 1417) was an English Lollard leader. From 1409 to 1413, he was summoned to parliament as Baron Cobham, in the right of his wife. Being a friend of Henry V, he long escaped prosecution for heresy. When convicted, he escaped from the Tower of London and then led a rebellion against the King. Eventually, he was captured and executed in London. He formed the basis for William Shakespeare's character John Falstaff, who was originally called John Oldcastle.
**Anthony Trollope (24 April 1815 – 6 December 1882) was an English novelist and civil servant of the Victorian era. Among his best-known works is a series of novels collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, which revolves around the imaginary county of Barsetshire. He also wrote novels on political, social, and gender issues, and other topical matters.
***
(_December_, 1880)
III
"If you find that you have no case," the old lawyer is reported to have said to the young, "abuse the plaintiff's attorney," and Judge Martin Grover,* of New York, used to say that it was apparently a great relief to a lawyer who had lost a case to betake himself to the nearest tavern and swear at the court. Abuse, in any event, seems to have been regarded by both of these authorities as a consolation in defeat. It is but carrying the theory a step further to resort to abuse in argument. Timon,** who is a club cynic--which is perhaps the most useless specimen of humanity--says that 'pon his honor nothing entertains him more than to see how little argument goes to the discussion of any question, and how immediate is the recourse to blackguardism.** The other day," he said, recently, "I was sitting in the smoking-room, and Blunt and Sharp*** began to talk about yachts. Sharp thinks that he knows all that can be known of yachts, and Blunt thinks that what he thinks is unqualified truth. Sharp made a strong assertion, and Blunt smiled. It was that lofty smile of amused pity and superiority, which is, I suppose, very exasperating. Sharp was evidently surprised, but he continued, and at another observation Blunt looked at him, and said, simply, 'Ridiculous!' As it seemed to me," said Timon, "the stronger and truer were the remarks of Sharp, the more Blunt's tone changed from contempt to anger, until he came to a torrent of vituperation, under which Sharp retired from the room with dignity.
***
*Martin Grover (October 20, 1811 Hartwick, Otsego County, New York – August 23, 1875 Angelica, Allegany County, New York) was an American lawyer, jurist, and politician from New York. He served one term in the United States House of Representatives from 1845 to 1847 and later as a justice on the New York Supreme Court from 1857 to 1867.
**Timon is an amazing play for many reasons. It is generally accepted to be an unfinished play and was included in the Shakespeare folio of 1623 due to sheer luck. There were copywright problems with Troilus and Cresida, and Timon was the eleventh hour replacement. It was never performed in Shakespeare’s lifetime and wasn’t performed as is until the early 1800s.
***'Sharp'-ness of intellect refers to how acute someone's understanding is, how readily they acquire information, and so on, close in meaning to intelligence. The general metaphor here is "cutting through" complexities and confusions, separating things, perhaps like someone clearing a path through the forest.
'Blunt'-ness of manner refers to a lack of diplomatic skill, lack of politeness in delivering positions, and so on. This relies upon a different metaphor, the idea that a blunt instrument tends to hurt more than a sharp one (think of a surgeon using a blunt knife). Both cut, perhaps equally effectively, but one does so more painfully than the other.
***
"I presume," said the cynic, "that Sharp was correct upon every point. But the more correct Sharp was, the more angry Blunt became. It was very entertaining, and it seems to me very much the way of more serious discussion." Timon was certainly right, and those who heard his remarks, and have since then seen him chuckling over the newspapers, are confident it is because he observes in them the same method of carrying on discussion. Much public debate recalls the two barbaric methods of warfare, which consist in making a loud noise and in emitting vile odors. A member of Congress pours out a flood of denunciatory words in the utmost rhetorical confusion, and seems to suppose that he has dismayed his opponent because he has made a tremendous noise. He is only an overgrown boy, who, like some other boys, imagines that he is very heroic when he shakes his head, and pouts his lip, and clinches his fist, and "calls names" in a shrill and rasping tone. Other members, who ought to know better, pretend to regard his performances as worthy of applause, and metaphorically pat him on the back and cry, "St, boy!" They only share--and in a greater degree, because they know better--the contempt with which he is regarded.
In the same way a newspaper writer attacks views which are not acceptable to him, not with argument, or satire, or wit, or direct refutation, but by metaphorically emptying slops, and directing whirlwinds of bad smells upon their supporters. The intention seems to be, not to confute the arguments, but to disgust the advocates. The proceeding is a confession that the views are so evidently correct that they will inevitably prevail unless their supporters can be driven away. This is an ingenious policy, for guns certainly cannot be served if the gunners are dispersed. Men shrink from ridicule and ludicrous publicity. However conscious of rectitude a man may be, it is exceedingly disagreeable for him to see the dead-walls and pavements covered with posters proclaiming that he is a liar and a fool. If he recoils, the enemy laughs in triumph; if he is indifferent, there is a fresh whirlwind.
A public man wrote recently to a friend that he had seen an attack upon his conduct in a great journal, and had asked his lawyer to take the necessary legal steps to bring the offender to justice. His friend replied that he had seen the attack, but that it had no more effect upon him than the smells from Newtown Creek.* They were very disgusting, but that was all. This is the inevitable result of blackguardism.** The newspaper reader, as he sees that one man supports one measure because his wife's uncle is interested in it, and another man another measure to gratify his grudge against a rival, gradually learns from his daily morning mentor that there is no such thing as honor, decency, or public spirit in public affairs; he chuckles with the club cynic, although for a very different reason, and forgets the contents of one column as he begins upon the next. If a man covers his milk toast, his breakfast, his lunch, dinner, and supper with a coating of Cayenne pepper, the pepper becomes as things in general became to Mr. Toots***-of no consequence.
***
*The Creek has been used by man for hundreds of years starting with Native Americans whose village and fields were at the head of the Creek. Dutch explorers first surveyed the Creek in the seventeenth century. The Dutch, and then the English, used the Creek for agriculture and fledgling industrial commerce, making it the oldest continuous industrial area in the United States Farms and plantations lined both shores of the Creek from the mid-1600’s to the mid-nineteenth century. Being cleaned up now.
**blackguardism
a: a rude or unscrupulous person b: a person who uses foul or abusive language
***Mr Toots, QUICK REFERENCE, A character in Dickens's Dombey and Son.
***
This kind of fury in personal denunciation is not force, as young writers suppose; it is feebleness. Wit, satire, brilliant sarcasm, are, indeed, legitimate weapons. It was these which Sydney Smith wielded in the early _Edinburgh Review_. But "calling names," and echoing the commonplaces of affected contempt, that is too weak even for Timon to chuckle over, except as evidence of mental vacuity. The real object in honest controversy is to defeat your opponent and leave him a friend. But the Newtown Creek method is fatal to such a result. Of course that method often apparently wins. But it always fails when directed against a resolute and earnest purpose. The great causes persist through seeming defeat to victory. But to oppose them with sneers and blackguardism is to affect to dam Niagara with a piece of paper. The crafty old lawyer advised the younger to reserve his abuse until he felt that he had no case. Judge Grover remarked that it was when the case was lost that the profanity began.
(_September_, 1882)
That concludes what I would like to share today. The essay on ‘Newspaper Ethics’ may have fallen flat to the reader. Hopefully something was gained from it, in comparison with the media landscape today. I learned a good deal regardless.
180th Posting, March 15, 2024.