Words Of Wisdom
I’m currently reading “The American Claimant” by Mark Twain, one of my favorite writers. Twain has a lovely talent for skewering the undeserving, in a manner that is timeless. I thought I would share some words regarding the function of the press:
The chief function of an English journal is that of all other journals the world over: it must keep the public eye fixed admiringly upon certain things, and keep it diligently diverted from certain others… It must keep the public eye fixed in loving and awful reverence upon the throne as a sacred thing, and diligently divert it from the fact that no throne was ever set up by the unhampered vote of a majority of any nation; and that hence no throne exists that has a right to exist…
And then, in defense of the American press:
Our press does not reverence kings, it does reverence so called nobilities, it does not reverence established ecclesiastical slaveries, it does not reverence laws which rob a younger son to fatten an elder one, it does not reverence any fraud or sham or infamy, howsoever old or rotten or holy, which sets one citizen above his neighbor by accident of birth…
Given the tradition of the White House Correspondents Dinner, I wonder just how close we’ve gotten to the English journal of the late 19th century?
