I think my favorite letter of all time was written by an Athenian gadfly named Herodes Atticus, about the year 174. He was a sort of
2nd century Noel Coward who seemed to be friends to everybody who was anybody in the Roman Empire, including the governor of Syria, Avidus Cassius. When Cassius decided to have himself declared Emperor, and raise a revolt, Herodes put styles to papyrus and produced one of most succent and eloquent bits of reportage in all of human history.
Herodes's letter, in full, reads as follows...
"Dear Cassius, You're mad. Yours, Herodes."
Herodes didn't need many words, because all ht was interested in was telling the truth. And the truth is almost always, simple. Thirty-six days after declaring himself emperior Cassius's army figured out out the truth. Cassius was assisinated and his head was delivered on a spike to the actual emperior, Marcus Aurelius. Ah, where are the Herodes Atticus' of our age?
Pitty, poor us. We live in an age of slow wits and pedestrian prognosticators. This is what comes of a world in which human life is valued only for what it can profit corporations.
The Washington Press corps of today is a Press Corpse, faint hearted inheritors of the first amendment,who see it merely as an oportunity to sell, rather than an obligation to defend. They represent the politicians to the public, rather than the public to the politicians.
Gov. Howard Dean says something bad about Republicans, or the Republicans say something nasty about the chairman of the Democratic party. How unusual. How unexpected. How...un-newsworthy. And yet there it is, in the headlines, day after day. This story has legs. But it has no brain. The ratings numbers go up when people shout on talk shows. Watching dog bitting man is so much more entertaining (and easily found) than waiting around for a man to bite a dog.
Is this what the elctorate wants to hear? Or would they prefer reports on the cost of health care for retireies that is driving GM into bankruptcy, the cost of prescription drugs that are driving retirees into the hospital and funeral home. The war in Iraq that is bankrupting the U.S. military. The Downing street memos that are being ignored by the White House. And the Washington Press.
But you see, the electorate is not an audience.
An audience has value to a corporation. An audience can be sold things. And that is the great question of our age. Hamlet be damed. To be today is to be a salesman.
An audience is passive, it seeks merely entertainment. An electorate is a participant. They seek to be involved. An audience leaves when the show is over, just when the electorate is getting down to work. And when less than 50% of elegible voters bother to vote, the corporations make the easy choice and play to the peanut gallery.
And while the news media were resting on their laurels and ratings points, what was the greatest news story of our age? What was the greatest story in the history of American Journalism that was missed completely? It was the manufacture of a war out of whole cloth. And the Washington Press Corps is still missing it. Because they remain so easily distracted by stories with legs about Democarts and epublicans bad mouthing each other. That's entertainment, brother. But it sure aint' democracy.
And if one of them, just one member of the Press Corpse had pointed out that 2/3 of Iraq had been under a no fly zone for ten years, with constant overflights by U.S. survaliance aircraft, making the creation and hiding of WMD industries very unlikely, then an additional 1,700 consumers of corporate news might be alive today and perhaps tens of thousand of other readers and viewers of corporate news would still have their arms and legs and eyes.
Still, to this day, if one of them, just one of them were to ask why it is patriotic for young Americans to open their veins and bleed for democracy in Iraq but it is not patriotic to ask wealthy Americans to open their wallets to help pay for Mr. Bush's war for democracy, perhaps the means might have been available to acheive that stated goal.
And if one of them, just one member of the Washington Press Corps were to point out that since the wealthy were not asked to sacrifice in the name of democracy in Iraq, then perhaps the stated goal was not the truth at all.
Ah, if only one of them had written the truth in the beginning. "Dear George Bush. You're mad. Yours, a reporter for the people."
Nobody writes that well these days.