Pecksniffs!
I offer up the following quote in support of the growing swell of opprobrium over the conspicuous vacuousness of the mainstream print press over the past decade or two. This is kin to an earlier post in offering historical backdrop and context (earlier involving broadcast non-news), while not in the least diluting the horror-show that is the near-total collapse of independent print journalism of late. Were it not for the internet and that pesky blogosphere anyone reading this would probably be on a list. Oops. We probably are anyway - naughty, naughty NSA!
On the first page of the eminent Sunpaper of last Friday appeared a dispatch from New York reporting that the American Newspaper Publisher's Association, there assembled for its annual convention and booze-guzzle, had passed a solemn resolution protesting that "the liberty of the press has been seriously threatened during the past year," pledging its members to "resist all interference with the right . . . of the press to free expression under the constitutional guarantees," and instructing its Committee on Federal Laws "to exercise its utmost efforts to maintain the liberty of freedom [sic] of the press wherever it may be threatened." On the same page of the Sunpaper, two columns away, appeared a dispatch from Philadelphia reporting that two women had been arrested and jailed for "distributing circulars which petition President Harding to grant amnesty to political prisoners."
Humor? Then the obscene is humorous - as, indeed, most normal Americans seem to hold. As for me, I see nothing to cackle over in the resolution of the publishers. Instead, it should be denounced briefly for what it is: a mass of degraded and disgusting cant. In the history of American journalism during the past half dozen years there is certainly nothing jocose. In all their dealings with the question of free speech the newspapers of the country, and especially the larger and more powerful ones, have been infinitely pusillanimous, groveling, dishonest and indecent. If, as they now pretend so boldly, their editors and proprietors are actually in favor of Article I of the Bill of Rights, then their long acquiesence in its violation proves that they are a herd of poltroons. And if, when it was so grossly violated, they were actually in favor of those who violated it, then their belated resolution proves that they are liars. I see no way to avoid these alternatives. I can imagine no process of reasoning, however subtle and ingenious, whereby persons whose words and acts are so heroically at odds could be converted into honest and honorable men.
[clip]
Perhaps it is their collective shame (rightly so) and/or corporate policy now that they are all owned by a handful of folks who probably have a lot more genes in common than Linnaeus, Darwin, Watson, and Crick would recommend, but comparable hysterics by the print press over Article I infringements are pretty sparse these days. Otherwise, this dusty piece by H. L. Mencken (Baltimore Evening Sun, May 2, 1922) seems to me to hit the nail uncannily squarely.
Oh, and to save all but two of you the trouble, "Pecksniff" is from Martin Chuzzlewhit: unctuously hypocritical, insincere, falsely moralistic. You can look it up (as I did)!
On the first page of the eminent Sunpaper of last Friday appeared a dispatch from New York reporting that the American Newspaper Publisher's Association, there assembled for its annual convention and booze-guzzle, had passed a solemn resolution protesting that "the liberty of the press has been seriously threatened during the past year," pledging its members to "resist all interference with the right . . . of the press to free expression under the constitutional guarantees," and instructing its Committee on Federal Laws "to exercise its utmost efforts to maintain the liberty of freedom [sic] of the press wherever it may be threatened." On the same page of the Sunpaper, two columns away, appeared a dispatch from Philadelphia reporting that two women had been arrested and jailed for "distributing circulars which petition President Harding to grant amnesty to political prisoners."
Humor? Then the obscene is humorous - as, indeed, most normal Americans seem to hold. As for me, I see nothing to cackle over in the resolution of the publishers. Instead, it should be denounced briefly for what it is: a mass of degraded and disgusting cant. In the history of American journalism during the past half dozen years there is certainly nothing jocose. In all their dealings with the question of free speech the newspapers of the country, and especially the larger and more powerful ones, have been infinitely pusillanimous, groveling, dishonest and indecent. If, as they now pretend so boldly, their editors and proprietors are actually in favor of Article I of the Bill of Rights, then their long acquiesence in its violation proves that they are a herd of poltroons. And if, when it was so grossly violated, they were actually in favor of those who violated it, then their belated resolution proves that they are liars. I see no way to avoid these alternatives. I can imagine no process of reasoning, however subtle and ingenious, whereby persons whose words and acts are so heroically at odds could be converted into honest and honorable men.
[clip]
Perhaps it is their collective shame (rightly so) and/or corporate policy now that they are all owned by a handful of folks who probably have a lot more genes in common than Linnaeus, Darwin, Watson, and Crick would recommend, but comparable hysterics by the print press over Article I infringements are pretty sparse these days. Otherwise, this dusty piece by H. L. Mencken (Baltimore Evening Sun, May 2, 1922) seems to me to hit the nail uncannily squarely.
Oh, and to save all but two of you the trouble, "Pecksniff" is from Martin Chuzzlewhit: unctuously hypocritical, insincere, falsely moralistic. You can look it up (as I did)!
posted by Sir Gumbo at 10:05 PM
0 comments
