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Дата написания1970-01-01
Язык книгиen
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"You said it!" agreed Drayton. "It's what most of the decent people in this country are thinking, I guess, even if they haven't begun saying it out loud yet. It strikes me the American people are a mighty patient lot—putting up with that demagogue. That was a rotten thing that happened up on the hill to-day, Quinlan—a damnable thing. Here was Mallard making the best speech in the worst cause that ever I heard, and getting away with it too. And there was Richland trying to answer him and in comparison making a spectacle of himself—Richland with all the right and all the decency on his side and yet showing up like a perfect dub alongside Mallard, because he hasn't got one-tenth of Mallard's ability as a speaker or one-tenth of Mallard's personal fire or stage presence or magnetism or whatever it is that makes Mallard so plausible—and so dangerous."

"That's all true enough, no doubt," said Quinlan; "and since it is true why don't the newspapers put Mallard out of business?"

"Why don't the newspapers put him out of business!" echoed Drayton. "Why, good Lord, man, isn't that what they've all been trying to do for the last six months? They call him every name in the calendar, and it all rolls off him like water off a duck's back. He seems to get nourishment out of abuse that would kill any other man. He thrives on it, if I'm any judge. I believe a hiss is music to his ears and a curse is a hushaby, lullaby song. Put him out of business? Why say, doesn't nearly every editorial writer in the country jump on him every day, and don't all the paragraphers gibe at him, and don't all the cartoonists lampoon him, and don't all of us who write news from down here in Washington give him the worst of it in our despatches? … And what's the result? Mallard takes on flesh and every red-mouthed agitator in the country and every mushy-brained peace fanatic and every secret German sympathiser trails at his heels, repeating what he says. I'd like to know what the press of America hasn't done to put him out of business!

"There never was a time, I guess, when the reputable press of this country was so united in its campaign to kill off a man as it is now in its campaign to kill off Mallard. No paper gives him countenance, except some of these foreign-language rags and these dirty little disloyal sheets; and until here just lately even they didn't dare to come out in the open and applaud him. Anyway, who reads them as compared with those who read the real newspapers and the real magazines? Nobody! And yet he gets stronger every day. He's a national menace—that's what he is."

"You said it again, son," said Quinlan. "Six months ago he was a national nuisance and now he's a national menace; and who's responsible—or, rather, what's responsible—for him being a national menace? Well, I'm going to tell you; but first I'm going to tell you something about Mallard. I've known him for twelve years, more or less—ever since he came here to Washington in his long frock coat that didn't fit him and his big black slouch hat and his white string tie and in all the rest of the regalia of the counterfeit who's trying to fool people into believing he's part tribune and part peasant."

"You wouldn't call Mallard a counterfeit, would you?—a man with the gifts he's got," broke in Drayton. "I've heard him called everything else nearly in the English language, but you're the first man that ever called him a counterfeit, to my knowledge!"

"Counterfeit? why, he's as bogus as a pewter dime," said Quinlan. "I tell you I know the man. Because you don't know him he's got you fooled the same as he's got so many other people fooled. Because he looks like a steel engraving of Henry Clay you think he is a Henry Clay, I suppose—anyhow, a lot of other people do; but I'm telling you his resemblance to Henry Clay is all on the outside—it doesn't strike in any farther than the hair roots. He calls himself a self-made man. Well, he's not; he's self-assembled, that's all. He's made up of standardised and interchangeable parts. He's compounded of something borrowed from every political mountebank who's pulled that old bunk about being a friend of the great common people and gotten away with it during the last fifty years. He's not a real genius. He's a synthetic genius."

"There are just two things about Mallard that are not spurious—two things that make up the real essence and tissue of him: One is his genius as a speaker and the other is his vanity; and the bigger of these, you take it from me, is his vanity. That's the thing he feeds on—vanity. It's the breath in his nostrils, it's the savour and the salt on his daily bread. He lives on publicity, on notoriety. And yet you, a newspaper man, sit here wondering how the newspapers could kill him, and never guessing the real answer."

"Well, what is the answer then?" demanded Drayton.

"Wait, I'm coming to that. The press is always prating about the power of the press, always nagging about pitiless publicity being potent to destroy an evil thing or a bad man, and all that sort of rot. And yet every day the newspapers give the lie to their own boastings. It's true, Drayton, that up to a certain point the newspapers can make a man by printing favourable things about him. By that same token they imagine they can tear him down by printing unfavourable things about him. They think they can, but they can't. Let them get together in a campaign of vituperation against a man, and at once they set everybody to talking about him. Then let them carry their campaign just over a psychological dividing line, and right away they begin, against their wills, to manufacture sentiment for him. The reactions of printer's ink are stronger somehow than its original actions—its chemical processes acquire added strength in the back kick. What has saved many a rotten criminal in this country from getting his just deserts? It wasn't the fact that the newspapers were all for him. It was the fact that all the newspapers were against him. The under dog may be ever so bad a dog, but only let enough of us start kicking him all together, and what's the result? Sympathy for him—that's what. Calling 'Unclean, unclean!' after a leper never yet made people shun him. It only makes them crowd up closer to see his sores. I'll bet if the facts were known that was true two thousand years ago. Certainly it's true to-day, and human nature doesn't change.

"But the newspapers have one weapon they've never yet used; at least as a unit they've never used it. It's the strongest weapon they've got, and the cheapest, and the most terrible, and yet they let it lie in its scabbard and rust. With that weapon they could destroy any human being of the type of Jason Mallard in one-twentieth of the time it takes them to build up public opinion for or against him. And yet they can't see it—or won't see that it's there, all forged and ready to their hands."

"And that weapon is what?" asked Drayton.

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