Some­how, I fell into read­ing bits and pieces of Mark Twain’s writ­ings. It start­ed with this piece linked from some mp3 blog. Then I start­ed pok­ing through the more obscure works at Project Guten­berg, and wound up with What Paul Bour­get Thinks of Us. I don’t know the pre­cise back­ground of this, but I did find some great quotes.

Twain grabbed me with this para­graph, which may be repack­aged for a per­ma­nent place­ment on this site:

I saw by his own inti­ma­tions that he was an Observ­er, and had a Sys­tem that used by nat­u­ral­ists and oth­er sci­en­tists. The nat­u­ral­ist col­lects many bugs and rep­tiles and but­ter­flies and stud­ies their ways a long time patient­ly. By this means he is present­ly able to group these crea­tures into fam­i­lies and sub­di­vi­sions of fam­i­lies by nice shad­ings of dif­fer­ences observ­able in their char­ac­ters. Then he labels all those shad­ed bugs and things with nice­ly descrip­tive group names, and is now hap­py, for his great work is com­plet­ed, and as a result he inti­mate­ly knows every bug and shade of a bug there, inside and out. It may be true, but a per­son who was not a nat­u­ral­ist would feel safer about it if he had the opin­ion of the bug. I think it is a pleas­ant Sys­tem, but sub­ject to error.

I like the mea­sured skep­ti­cism about our abil­i­ty to tru­ly under­stand the world, and his descrip­tion of nat­ur­al his­to­ry is as good as any, I suppose

Twain then pro­ceeds to a more pre­cise con­sid­er­a­tion of M. Bour­get, but could just as eas­i­ly be talk­ing about David Brooks:

The Observ­er of Peo­ples has to be a Clas­si­fi­er, a Grouper, a Deduc­er, a Gen­er­al­iz­er, a Psy­chol­o­giz­er; and, first and last, a Thinker. He has to be all these, and when he is at home, observ­ing his own folk, he is often able to prove com­pe­ten­cy. But his­to­ry has shown that when he is abroad observ­ing unfa­mil­iar peo­ples the chances are heav­i­ly against him. He is then a nat­u­ral­ist observ­ing a bug, with no more than a nat­u­ral­ist’s chance of being able to tell the bug any­thing new about itself, and no more than a nat­u­ral­ist’s chance of being able to teach it any new ways which it will pre­fer to its own.

Mov­ing on from Paul Bour­get’s unfor­tu­nate ten­den­cy to clas­si­fy peo­ple as “the Amer­i­can Coquette,” or “the Bobo in Par­adise,” Twain address­es anoth­er unfor­tu­nate prac­tice: credulity.

He entered those things in his note-book with­out sus­pi­cion, he takes them out and deliv­ers them to the world with a can­dor and sim­plic­i­ty which show that he believed them gen­uine. They throw alto­geth­er too much light. They reveal to the native the ori­gin of his find. I sup­pose he knows how he came to make that nov­el and cap­ti­vat­ing dis­cov­ery, by this time. If he does not, any Amer­i­can can tell him–any Amer­i­can to whom he will show his anec­dotes. It was “put up” on him, as we say. It was a jest–to be plain, it was a series of frauds. To my mind it was a poor sort of jest, wit­less and con­temptible. The play­ers of it have their reward, such as it is; they have exhib­it­ed the fact that what­ev­er they may be they are not ladies. M. Bour­get did not dis­cov­er a type of coquette; he mere­ly dis­cov­ered a type of prac­ti­cal jok­er. One may say the type of prac­ti­cal jok­er, for these peo­ple are exact­ly alike all over the world. Their equip­ment is always the same: a vul­gar mind, a puerile wit, a cru­el dis­po­si­tion as a rule, and always the spir­it of treachery.

In his Chap­ter IV. M. Bour­get has two or three columns grave­ly devot­ed to the col­lat­ing and exam­in­ing and psy­chol­o­giz­ing of these sor­ry lit­tle frauds. One is not moved to laugh. There is noth­ing fun­ny in the sit­u­a­tion; it is only pathet­ic. The stranger gave those peo­ple his con­fi­dence, and they dis­hon­or­ably treat­ed him in return.

But one must be allowed to sus­pect that M. Bour­get was a lit­tle to blame him­self. Even a prac­ti­cal jok­er has some lit­tle judg­ment. He has to exer­cise some degree of sagac­i­ty in select­ing his prey if he would save him­self from get­ting into trou­ble. In my time I have sel­dom seen such dar­ing things mar­ket­ed at any price as these con­science­less folk have worked off at par on this con­fid­ing observ­er. It com­pels the con­vic­tion that there was some­thing about him that bred in those spec­u­la­tors a quite unusu­al sense of safe­ty, and encour­aged them to strain their pow­ers in his behalf. They seem to have sat­is­fied them­selves that all he want­ed was “sig­nif­i­cant” facts, and that he was not accus­tomed to exam­ine the source whence they pro­ceed­ed. It is plain that there was a sort of con­spir­a­cy against him almost from the start–a con­spir­a­cy to freight him up with all the strange extrav­a­gances those peo­ple’s decayed brains could invent.

The lengths to which they went are next to incred­i­ble. They told him things which sure­ly would have excit­ed any one else’s sus­pi­cion, but they did not excite his. Con­sid­er this:

“There is not in all the Unit­ed States an entire­ly nude statue.”

If an angel should come down and say such a thing about heav­en, a rea­son­ably cau­tious observ­er would take that angel’s num­ber and inquire a lit­tle fur­ther before he added it to his catch. What does the present observ­er do? Adds it. Adds it at once. Adds it, and labels it with this inno­cent comment:

“This small fact is strange­ly significant.”

It does seem to me that this kind of observ­ing is defective.

In this long, but illu­mi­nat­ing pas­sage, Twain essen­tial­ly describes the prob­lems in jour­nal­ism today. On issues like the Iraq War, the 9–11 report and its uneasy rela­tion­ship with its con­gres­sion­al coun­ter­parts, stem cells, Abu Ghraib, John Ker­ry and George W. Bush’s time in uni­form, and a host of oth­er issues, the press response is sim­ply to report what was said, rather than to assess it’s accuracy.

Amer­i­cans fear nudi­ty, even in art

Date­line: Amer­i­ca. Well placed indi­vid­u­als stat­ed today that “there is not in all the Unit­ed States an entire­ly nude stat­ue.” This small fact is strange­ly sig­nif­i­cant. Great world pow­ers includ­ing the ancient Greeks and Romans have appre­ci­at­ed the artis­tic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of nude peo­ple. In many cas­es, the decline in this form of art cor­re­lates with the decline of those empires. The reign of Queen Vic­to­ria marked the end of the ascen­dan­cy of the British Empire, and is also not­ed for its repres­sion of pub­lic sexuality. …

And so forth. I ask lit­tle of the world, but I do ask that reporters dig deep­er. When John Ashcroft announces that his agents have avert­ed dozens of attacks and con­vict­ed bajil­lions of ter­ror­ists, I’d like the press to report that only after review­ing doc­u­ments. I’d like the press to announce that Pres­i­dent Bush released all of his mil­i­tary records only after deter­min­ing that all the records that must exist actu­al­ly do. I’d like arti­cles about Sam Brown­back­’s tout­ing of adult stem cell research to make clear not only that he is try­ing to under­mine embry­on­ic stem cell research, but that med­ical researchers are in broad agree­ment that both approach­es are impor­tant in the search for cures to dev­as­tat­ing dis­eases. The sto­ry isn’t “Brown­back touts adult stem cells,” it’s “Brown­back asserts false dichoto­my between adult and embry­on­ic stem cells.” It seems like reporters who are giv­en nick­names like “Steno Sue” are prac­tic­ing the same defec­tive style of observ­ing that Twain skew­ers so brilliantly.

When Twain writes the para­graph begin­ning, “But one must be allowed to sus­pect that M. Bour­get was a lit­tle to blame

him­self,” he gets to the heart of the prob­lem. We can and must blame admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials who lie to a reporter because “they seem to have sat­is­fied them­selves that all he want­ed was ‘sig­nif­i­cant’ facts, and that he was not accus­tomed to exam­ine the source whence they pro­ceed­ed.” But a jour­nal­ist who allows that per­cep­tion to stand is equal­ly cul­pa­ble. This is why peo­ple are so exer­cised about Robert Novak’s will­ing­ness to blow a CIA agen­t’s cov­er just because the White House leaked the infor­ma­tion to him. Many peo­ple have point­ed out that the sto­ry a good jour­nal­ist would have writ­ten was “White House attempts to leak ID of secret agent.” Many – per­haps a dozen or more – reporters received the leak. Many did the hon­or­able thing and refused to act on it. But the leak­er knew he must “exer­cise some degree of sagac­i­ty in select­ing his prey if he would save him­self from get­ting into trou­ble.” He only leaked to peo­ple who would look the oth­er way, and kept try­ing until some­one actu­al­ly ran the story.

This is also why the New York Times mea cul­pa was so frus­trat­ing. They admit­ted that they had been fooled as bad­ly as M. Bour­get – that there was, in Twain’s words, “a con­spir­a­cy to freight [it] up with all the strange extrav­a­gances those peo­ple’s decayed brains could invent”. The Times right­ly calls the “con­science­less folk” what they are, but refused to make Twain’s leap and call the kind of observ­ing defec­tive, even as the liars lied.