Wednesday, October 10, 2007 12:21 AM CDT
BOOK REVIEW: 'Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers
And The Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism', By Eric Burns
By Herb Meeker, Staff Writer
hmeeker@jg-tc.com
Ask many Americans about the state of the printed press today and you might get expletives mixed with moans about too much fluff, schlock and propaganda.
And if you let them go on they might hark back to the Founding Fathers as the Golden Age of the printed word in this country. They’ll talk of an era when newspapers were run by enlightened men holding the lantern high to lead their fellow citizens to the paths of righteous democracy. And if you listen closely, you might hear a band playing “Yankee Doodle.”
Hogwash!
In “Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers And The Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism,” Eric Burns offers a rousing history of early American journalism, when some newspapers were known as “Dung Barges” and some editors were raucous radicals bent on destroying reputations, not lighting up the world.
Burns shows how American newspapers were used as political tools by Patriots for the Revolution and Tories vehemently opposed to it. And after the United States government took over, papers sliced and diced American politicians, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and John Adams. Burns, a former NBC News correspondent and host of “Fox News Watch” on Fox News Channel, reveals American journalism in the 1700s suffered from some of the same problems present now.
Newspapers were opinionated organs that concentrated on slim facts or outright gossip, governmental leaks from sources with simple political vengeance as their motivation. Many times, the politicians did the writing, under assumed names, of course. Hamilton went by “Pacificus” and “Phocion” in the pages of the Gazette of The United States.
He and others committed personal attacks that would shock even the most jaded editor of today. And some of those attacks concerned sexual scandals. Yes, politicians have never really changed after two centuries.
Hamilton, treasury secretary under Washington and later a presidential contender, was caught in a love affair that involved a beautiful woman named Maria, who had the morals of a black widow. Burns seems to revel in describing how Hamilton, a financial and political genius, eventually got trapped in an early badger game. And it eventually ended up in print, too, torching Hamilton’s reputation.
Jefferson, whom Burns names as the most talented “spin master” on the press of his day and also Hamilton’s bitter rival, later had his love affair with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, exposed in print by the Recorder.
“It is well known that the man, whom it delighteth the people to honor,” James T. Callender wrote of Jefferson, “and from many years past has kept, as his concubine one of his slaves. Her name is SALLY. The name of her eldest son is TOM. His features are said to bear a striking resemblance to those of the president himself. ...”
As one political observer once said of using the printed word to even scores: This is not revenge; it’s Gothic revenge.
But there are some bright spots within “Infamous Scribblers” that have few Machiavellian overtones.
Burns writes of the John Peter Zenger libel trial that cracked the door on press freedom. And Benjamin Franklin’s tinkerings with wit and wisdom are offered, too. There is a fine chapter on news from newspapers during the American Revolution, which reveals not everyone wanted to dump George the First.
So reading this book by PublicAffairs Publishing might convince you that the Founding Fathers faced rising blood pressure levels when they flipped through a newspaper. They were belted by the papers long before there was a Beltway.
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