“Never let the truth interfere with a good story.” — Mark Twain nnWith the 2024 election one year away, the rhetorical battle is heating up, with the quadrennial incendiary attacks on the policies of the opposition characterized as doomed for Dante’s Inferno. Nothing new. Demonization of the other side has deep roots in American politics, and the press plays the game to increase their profits, the truth sometimes be damned. Two historic examples demonstrate the culpability of the public to embellished reporting and its effectiveness on public policy.
In the early days, political parties formed around the Federalists of Hamilton and Adams (today’s GOP) and the Democratic-Republicans of Jefferson (today’s Democrats). The Federalists represented monied interests, while the Dem-Reps championed workers and farmers. Each accused the other of corruption and treason. Sound familiar? Both had highly partisan newspapers, the cable news of their day, reporting the “facts,” or at least their version of them.
The Federalists under Adams passed The Sedition Act (1798) which forbade “scandalous or malicious statements designed to defame” government officials. Jefferson supporters were fined and jailed for its violation. In the 1800 election campaign, Jefferson attacked Adams as a hypocrite and “British bootlicker.” Adams fired back that a Jefferson election would make murder and rape commonplace. Federalist tabloids piled on that Jefferson was a coward, atheist, and sexual predator.
Undaunted, Jefferson won, pardoned those imprisoned, and allowed The Sedition Act to expire, an early victory for the First Amendment freedoms of speech and press. Jefferson was later memorialized on Mt. Rushmore, the $2 bill, and the nickel.
Fast forward 100 years to the Spanish-American War (1898). Two enterprising journalists, W.R. Hearst (subject of the “Citizen Kane” movie) and Joseph Pulitzer (outstanding journalism Prize namesake) competed for readers, with Spanish atrocities in Cuba a hot topic. War fever was high, and the sinking of the American battleship Maine with 268 sailors lost created a Pearl Harbor-type moment for condemning Spain, though a later Navy inquiry blamed an onboard accidental coal fire. No matter. The opportunist Hearst instructed an illustrator, who had been sent to Cuba to cover the insurrection, “You furnish the pictures. I’ll furnish the war.”
Hearst and Pulitzer got their war. From it emerged a new national hero, Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Rider volunteers. “Yellow journalism” entered the American lexicon, meaning “sensationalized reporting to attract and influence readers.” Again, sound familiar?
Expect more in 2024.
ED ENGLER, Sebring, Fla.
The oligarchs must be starting to panic. Donald Trump is heading into the 2024 election year facing 91 felony counts in state and federal courts and damages still to be assessed for civil fraud and sexual assault in New York. They can count on millions of gullible people to vote for Trump, but the oligarchs’ efforts to divert Democratic voters by putting up backsliding Democrats, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West, have stalled, so they’re turning to a proven progressive vote drainer, Jill Stein, to mount a Green Party comeback in the hopes of diverting enough votes in swing states to let Trump sneak in again, as Stein did in 2016. And the 6-3 Republican majority on the Supreme Court and the reversal of Roe vs. Wade still hasn’t made Stein and her Green cult feel shame for what they’ve done.
CECELIA DELAMBRE, Houston, Texas
Regarding “Trump boasts of support from Hannibal Lecter … latest display of mental slippage,” in Dispatches, 11/1/23 TPP.
Why am I not surprised that the ex-president, who calls himself “a very steady genius,” believes that World War II hasn’t started yet? And that Hannibal Lecter, the evil character in the movie, “The Silence of the Lambs,” is a great actor whom he likes, because Lecter said on television, “I love Donald Trump.”
And there’s more: He believes that Barack Obama was his opponent in the 2016 presidential race.
What does surprise me is that no one shows pity to that poor man and takes him to his room before he makes an even more spectacular fool of himself.
DAVID QUINTERO, Monrovia, Calif.
Taxpayer dollars should not be used to subsidize methane digesters on Confined Animal Feeding Operations! Government programs such as EQIP, should not be used to help large-scale industrial farms get bigger. In offering public dollars in support of a CAFO building a new methane digester, the government is essentially advocating for large-scale agriculture to continue to dominate in this state.
One third of our farmers in [Wisconsin] are grazers who will never see any benefit of the millions of dollars that are handed out as part of EQIP and other conservation programs. In fact, in California from 2015-2019, over $180 million was handed out to developers to implement new methane digesters. Only 12 developers ever applied for the money and the lion’s share of the money went to only two developers. These dollars are not making it into the hands of the farmers who are actually practicing conservation, and instead they are being funneled to middle men pursuing a large construction contract.
The dollars in these conservation programs are meant to move agriculture in a more sustainable direction, not to incentivize the production of more manure and change the burden of payment from the private owner to the general public.
JOSEPH CHILDS, Scott Township, Wis.
I have been a long-time reader and have appreciated your informed, incisive, and contentious approach to current events in the spirit of H.L. Mencken.
I was appalled, however, by the use of the term “prick” by Frank Lingo in writing [in the 11/15/23 TPP] of Pope Benedict XVI’s supposed “protecting pedophile priests.” Not only was it an inappropriate, vulgar term, but Lingo’s characterization of Pope Benedict was inaccurate. Below is an AP article that renders an accurate view of Pope Benedict’s actions regarding the treatment of predator priests:
Jan. 1, 2023. VATICAN CITY (AP) — “Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is rightly credited with having been one of the 20th century’s most prolific Catholic theologians, a teacher-pope who preached the faith via volumes of books, sermons and speeches. But he rarely got credit for another important aspect of his legacy: having done more than anyone before him to turn the Vatican around on clergy sexual abuse.
“As cardinal and pope, Benedict pushed through revolutionary changes to church law to make it easier to defrock predator priests, and he sacked hundreds of them. He was the first pontiff to meet with abuse survivors. And he reversed his revered predecessor on the most egregious case of the 20th century Catholic Church, finally taking action against a serial pedophile who was adored by St. John Paul II’s inner circle.
“But much more needed to be done, and following his death Saturday, abuse survivors and their advocates made clear they did not feel his record was anything to praise, noting that he, like the rest of the Catholic hierarchy, protected the image of the institution over the needs of victims and in many ways embodied the clerical system that fueled the problem.”
I hope in the future such offensive word usage would not be acceptable to you. Could it be you are a devotee of alliteration?!
Sincerely,
Deacon JIM McFADDEN, Fair Oaks, Calif.
The New York Times on Sunday, Nov. 5, has a front-page feature article titled: “The Gunners Who Came Home Damaged. Their Own Weapons Rattled Their Brains. But the Pentagon Was Silent.”
This is some real hard-hitting journalism by the jewel of our state media. The New York Times goes after the Pentagon not for butchering defenseless Muslims in a phantom smoke-and-mirrors “war” in Iraq. No, the Times goes after the Pentagon for not doing a better job of protecting the brains and well-being of US soldiers while they butchered defenseless Muslims in Iraq during the “war.”
Who, then, is guilty for all of this? Not US soldiers; they’re victims, just like the Iraqis. The guilty parties are those in Washington, who put the phantom “war” into motion, and those who kept it rolling for decades, and also the members of our mainstream media that refuse (to this day) to call the Iraq “War” for what it’s always been — an illusion.
FRANK ERICKSON, Minneapolis, Minn.
Question: Why is there no problem with regulations on weapons, ammunition or seasons on animal hunting, but fights for the right open open season on humans?
Thank you for your fine reporting. I always look forward to the next issue. Keep up the good work — the good fight.
DOROTHY W. BERGIN, Colville, Wash.
From The Progressive Populist, December 15, 2023
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