“A picture is worth a thousand words”: a saying traceable, I’m
told, to the noted American journalist Arthur Brisbane. His sage
observation was first proclaimed on the pages of The New York Evening
Journal in 1911. I had always thought the cliché a product of an
ancient Chinese philosopher, say Confucius, or Lao Tzu, or Charlie Chan.
Perchance, I reasoned, it fell from the ready pen of a baker of fortune
cookies. Live and learn. Nevertheless, being cursed as I am with
the absolute opposite capacity of eidetic recall, I tended to doubt the
veracity of the proverb altogether. Whether its provenance is the ancient
orient or downtown Manhattan, it is a saying wasted on one such as I, to whom,
conversely, a thousand visual images seem incapable of generating recollections
which can be easily evoked by the simplest words or phrases. I realize,
however, I remain only an exception proving Mr. Brisbane's universal rule.
Long have the literati evoked vivid pictures using the
delightful bon mot or clever turn of a phrase. Speaking of "bon
mots," take the French (Anyone? Please?). It is said that around the
16th century the French invented a small gunpowder-driven
anti-personnel device called a petard. A petard is in essence a miniature
bomb capable of producing discrete but lethal explosions when armed and
detonated properly. Such a weapon lies behind the witty aphorism "he
was hoist on his own petard." These 7 words draw a vivid picture for
many. To be "hoist on one's own petard" is equivalent to a more
laconic expression taken from the American West: "to shoot oneself in the
foot." This latter saying compared any act of unintended self-harm
to the fate of an unfortunate gunman who, when drawing his revolver carelessly,
instead of inflicting harm on an opposing dualist, would inadvertently shoot
himself in his own foot. From childhood's hour when I first heard of a
petard, I understood, that at best, the epithet "hoist on one's own
petard" described an extremely unfavorable situation… most definitely not
good.
Through the years the meaning of this phrase was explained to me
in several ways. The most memorable to a young man, I suppose, was the
explanation that the phrase spoke of an unexpectedly loud expulsion of
flatulence. Such an occasion would be indelicate, of course, but as Mel
Brooks discovered in "Blazing Saddles," soundly amusing.
Perhaps the following explanation of the phrase is the truer one. It was
reported to me that the observation "hoist on one's own petard"
derived from the unfortunate experience of many a dapper French bon vivant who
would arm the lock on his courtyard gate with a small petard. The
explosive device was intended to discourage practitioners of the ancient art of
breaking and entering (cf. Ex. 22:2-3). Thus protected, not by Smith and
Wesson but more rudimentally by its favorite propellant: sulfur,
charcoal, and potassium nitrate -- gunpowder to you -- the overly confident
young man would go off to enjoy his evening of debauchery.
Unfortunately such young men would often return to their residences somewhat
"in their cups" and, forgetting they had armed their gates with a
gunpowder device, insert their keys only to be instantly "hoist on their
own petard," launched, so to speak, by their own WMDs (Weapons of Miniature
though quite adequate Destruction). Whatever the
true origin of the colorful phrase describing such a hapless venture as being
hoist on one's own petard, both explanations listed above certainly paint quite
a number of pictures with but few words. These verbal to visual
still-shots could form a film classic, a movie short perhaps, or as the French
might call it, un cinema verite. Possible title: "Boom and
Adieu."
My point, before it escapes me altogether, is simply this: our
poor benighted country in its endless 21st century
quest for truth, justice, and the American way seems inevitably bound to be
hoist on one petard or another. We have painted ourselves ideologically
into morally bleak and ambiguous corners where there remain few if any options
left to describe reality in a socially acceptable manner. Such is the
dilemma of our social and politically correct world. Progressives have
rent the fabric of discourse by setting the strictest limits to any allowable
language. Sic Semper Tyrannis!
To illustrate this semi-radical observation consider modern
television. Along with its aging parent, print journalism, it provides
the ultimate window on our world. Petards abound on channel after
channel, should the product be news, or reality TV, or the ubiquitous sit-com.
The differences between these venues are becoming less and less detectable.
I eagerly await the day when laugh tracks will be inserted into the Six O'clock
Evening News. But again I digress. Any channel will serve to
illustrate our growing predicament, whether from the left via CNN, or the right
via Fox, or from the other dimensions of time and space via MSNBC.
Case in point: the streets of Baltimore were filled with rioters last month. And if
those streets did not run red with blood, as reporters and opportunistic
activists repeatedly warned they might, the verbiage of their reportage
concerning those streets certainly ran a river of vivid purple. I have
forgotten the cause celebre that triggered the fury of the mob, I think it had
something to do with spring break. Nevertheless reports had to be made
and stories filed. Don't ask me why, but dead air and lower case
headlines remain the greatest fear of both television networks and the print
news media. The roots of Baltimore's outrage were analyzed on all
channels, and from one editorial to another. Of course all this was
carried on in an acceptable manner. Journalistic analysis, racing down
the only tracts a politically corrected debate allowed, quickly identified
poverty and joblessness as the root cause of Baltimore's dismay; Federal
monies, the only hope. In Baltimore the teenage population that filled
the streets was evidently greatly concerned with unemployment and inadequate
health care. Ya think? Well, no, but these concerns are acceptable.
What was not acceptable was any comment that might have spoken of moral
failure. You could not say teens filled the streets of Baltimore because
"foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child," and most certainly
you could not say "the rod of correction will drive it far from him."
In our brave newly liberated world, fifty years after Lenny Bruce and George
Carlin, there are more words than ever that cannot be said on television.
Today you may freely refer to excrement in all its Germanic expressions,
question as dubious the parentage of any adversary, and freely summon forth the
deity's judgement of condemnation. You may laugh at the Savior's titles
from the cradle to the grave. But what you cannot say is anything that
resembles the Ten Commandments. Ours is an age of persistent self-imposed
moral censorship. It is a censorship of any favorable attempts to speak
of traditional morality in prime time. Every analysis of political
problems or possibilities in the modern media from Christiana Amanpour to Megyn
Kelly is forced into a lock step march. The only social and political
analysis allowed to modern popular journalism plays out like the boring rehash
of Fabian socialism's worst shibboleths or the last 25 editorials from the Op
Ed pages of the Times. Here only the deprived can play the victim.
The only enemy is material want. The only cures to be identified must
provide chickens in the pot and cars in the garage. Heroes and villains
are defined strictly along economic flow charts. The myopia of economic
determinism defines the role of every player. All agents of law
enforcement by definition therefore become opponents of necessary social change
defending as they do the status quo. Police inherently oppress the
victims of an unjust system with justice being defined as mass equality and
injustice as any deviation above or below the mean line. It is a libretto
composed by the boys from Occupy Wall Street. There is but one ubiquitous
social corrective. It is intoned by a chorus of schoolmarms on the
airwaves and in the papers. Their repeated refrain: “from each according
to his ability to each according to his need.” In this fashion strict
limits are imposed upon the ideology of public discourse by a politically
corrected language. This language demands nothing more from a media
savant beyond a replay of The Threepenny Opera. Indeed the language can
service little more. The heart of human beings may be deceitful and
desperately wicked, but Jeremiah would not be allowed to say that on T.V.
And were he to try would his logic sound like a foreign language at best or, at
worst, gross bigotry? And though the poor may be with us always, they
are always good for a moment of pathos between commercials.
And then there is
Bruce Jenner, the Olympian who has surgically altered his praenomen and now
demands to be called Caitlyn. Perhaps we could settle on "The
Athlete Formerly Known as Bruce". Actually I am less concerned with
nomenclature than where M. Jenner takes his comfort stops in airports and the
odd restaurants he may frequent. I need the information to prepare my
granddaughters. Nonetheless one may no longer dare to call Jenner's
drastic efforts to alter his personal reality perverse. An editor of a
large New Jersey daily once told me that very thing as she, in a swift act of
righteous indignation, changed the wording of an article she had asked me to
write. The topic she assigned me was a Christian view of Homosexual
rights. When I stated that homosexuality was a perversion she gasped and
said: "you can't say that." So much for public debate in the
media of today. It's hard to discuss something you can't talk about.
So how does Jenner's efforts to mimic RuPaul find reportage today? Ask
Fox's Megan Kelly. "He (Kelly said, solemnly referring to M. Jenner)
has given hope to millions of transgendered people." That's right,
in fevered pursuit of fairness Fox News has tipped the balance of sexual
insanity well into the red states' understanding of things. Despite the
fact that the most reliable studies report that less than .3 % of our
population even questions their sexuality, we must now add the T word to the B,
L and, G words that replace… well, you know what they replace. A third of
one percent of our population amounts to half a million at best. It also
includes many who are simply confused adolescents. What drove Ms. Kelly's
off the cuff remarks? She was clearly hoist on her own petard. One
cannot speak disparagingly of the dead or the gay in her media world. So quick,
say something noble. Thus the debate ended without a word. What was
generally held to be a pathologically neurotic surrender to exhibitionism for
centuries and an act of decided mental derangement is such no longer.
Transvestism is now a noble quest for freedom. Mel Gibson, no doubt,
will soon play the lead role as a sexually liberated Braveheart.
The petards of
politically corrected speech are legion. They are, in effect, efforts to
redefine reality by controlling how we are allowed to speak about that reality.
Much like Daniel's Little Horn who with "great words" presumed to
change the "times and the laws" only to incur the inevitable wrath of
God (Dan. 7), the politically correct seek to change their times and laws and
demonstrate their moral superiority by demanding what can and cannot be said.
Self-righteousness replaces the more familiar self-loathing of the liberal
mind. In actuality the lexicon of the political correct is simply a
window on their hubris. As we proudly speak in politically accepted
terms and furiously denounce the improprieties of what is assumed to be less
enlightened speech, we think we are assuring ourselves a place among the wise.
It is all self-deception. At best we doom our society to tepid
mediocrity. At worst we are unleashing the destructive force of the
sinful and "desperately wicked" human heart. In one sense we
may be following Alice down the rabbit hole. But in another, far more
wretched fate, American society is about to be blown upward, hoist on its own
petard.
-- Mike Braun