PUFFERY OF THE PRESS.
THE “able editor” is perhaps the only
quack doctor extant who greedily swallows his own
medicine and foolishly imagines that it does him good.
Puffery is the “able editor's”
invariable prescription, no matter whether the patient be
a moss-grown town, a broken-down political
roué—the victim of early indiscretions—
or a Cheap-John merchant suffering the first paroxysms
of financial dissolution. Although he knows how his
medicine is made,—knows that it is a nauseous
compound of rank hypocrisy and brazen mendacity—he
actually believes that, if taken in liberal doses, it is potent
to cure commercial paralysis or put new life into a
political corpse. When the first experiment fails to prove
satisfactory, instead of changing the treatment he
doubles the dose.
One would suppose that, like most
Cagliostros who pick up a precarious livelihood by
pumping the bellies of their betters full of the east wind,
the “able editor” would
laugh in his sleeve at his dupes; but not so. He is more
in earnest than the Lagado doctor, described by Gulliver,
who had discovered a short-cut for the cure of colic,—as
little discouraged when a patient bursts under the some-what peculiar treatment. So greedy is he for his own
medicine, so fond of working the bellows for the
expansion of his own bowels, that he can scarce find
time to attend to his patients. Pick up any newspaper,
big or little, “great daily,” with fake voting
contest annex, or country weekly shot full of ads. of city
swindling concerns and note what the “able
editor” thinks of himself; how he twists and turns to
find some pretext for parading his own transcendent
greatness! See how he greedily seizes upon every little
chunk of “taffy” and rolls it as a sweet morsel
under his tongue; how he places in his cap every foolish
feather which the idle wind of puffery wafts within his
clutch, and then struts in the face of Heaven, a sight to
provoke the contempt of men, the pity of the gods! Let
the
Boomerville Broadaxe but intimate that the
Bungtown Boomer knows a thing or two, and
forthwith the latter transfers the saccharine slug to its
own columns, and perchance, “points to it with
pride,”—bids the Bungtown world behold what the
world of Boomerville thinks of it! Then the
Bungtown Boomer intimates that the
Boomerville Broadaxe likewise knows a thing
or two, and the latter, which has been eagerly watching
for this Roland for its Oliver, swoops hungrily down upon
this delectable morsel and cries ha! ha! It has obtained
value received, has tickled and been tickled in return!
Then the editors of these two great “public
educators” begin a cross-fire of sugar-plums, much
to the edification of the world and their own mutual
satisfaction!
What would we think of that lawyer, doctor
or merchant who went about assisduously proclaiming
with sound of
trumpet what his fellows said about him? Would we not
vote him a fool? at best a conceited prig, lacking in taste
and good manners?
Commendation is sweet to all; but it is just as
permissible for a belle to boast her conquests in the
ballroom; the lawyer to inform judge and jury what his
fellow-disciples of Blackstone think of him; the scholar to
parade his erudition or the merchant his integrity, as for
an editor to reproduce in his own paper fulsome
compliments paid him for no other purpose under Heaven than
to get a puff in return.
