Why I Love Joseph Pulitzer--Part Two of a Two Part Series

I’ve mentioned before that, fresh on the heels of the really mindblowing success of my first novel (Ozymandias and Other Stories—get it on Amazon, or at Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, and other fine bookstores) (but not Borders) I’m blazing through another one—this one about Joseph Pulitzer.

There are two lies in that previous paragraph. My first novel has experienced nothing like mindblowing success. Nor am I exactly blazing. The Pulitzer novel—tentatively titled A Jew in America—has taken up the last five years of my life. It’s nowhere near done. It may never be. But every man needs a hobby, and I suck at carving ships in bottles.

It’s been an interesting process. This is the first novel I’ve ever attempted (there are five unpublished ones moldering away at the bottom of my file cabinet) that’s required me to do actual research. It feels like work. And in some ways, at some points, I’ve found myself paralyzed because I’m constantly asking myself if I’m smart enough to write this book. Do I know enough about 19^th century America? The Gilded Age? American journalism? St. Louis? New York? Hungary? Chauncey Depew, Grover Cleveland, William Whitney, Carl Schurz, and the rest of the 19th century luminaries who played a role in Pulitzer’s life?

It hasn’t been a completely barren run. I’ve gotten pretty decent mileage out of a  monograph I wrote based on my research, which consequently appeared in Gateway: The Journal of the Missouri Historical Society, The St. Louis Journalism Review, and now, apparently, an upcoming issue of the St. Louis Jewish Light.

It’s been a while since I was in therapy, but I suspect there are a few other unconscious reasons why I’ve dragged this out so long. I’m actually enjoying the research. I never much cared about American history, but it’s been a fascinating trip, and I’ve gotten to read a lot of good books at which I would not otherwise have looked twice. And I think I really don’t want to let Joseph Pulitzer go. Even though he’s been dead for precisely one hundred years, I enjoy his company.

In a weird way, I’m sort of glad that Mr. Pulitzer did fall into relative (and unmerited) obscurity, because he avoided the inevitable hagiography that happens to any well-known American hero. Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Roosevelt, Daniel Webster, Noah Webster, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Woodrow Wilson, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton—all of them have been turned into the American version of plaster saints. It’s taken more than fifty years of pretty hardcore Revisionist history and some nasty battles to uncover certain uncomfortable, but humanizing, truths about them. Washington was a bit of a fop. Lincoln had nastily authoritarian tendencies. Jefferson had a thing for black chicks and didn’t believe Jesus was the Son of God. And on it goes.

And while some traditionalists and conservatives might fume about treating our national heroes disrespectfully (and I’d quibble with this. I personally think telling the truth is a pretty decent sign of respect), for me, at least, knocking the idols off their pedestals makes them more human, more approachable, more comprehensible, and, ultimately, more likable.

Which is, I suppose, part of what attracted me to Joseph Pulitzer in the first place. Never having suffered the secular beatification we ram up the asses of better-known American heroes, he remains so defiantly human, flawed, and, in the end, likable in spite of his unlikability, that I had no choice but to fall in love with him. In an earlier post, I explained why he was important. Now, I’ll explain why I like him.

He was brilliant, eccentric, profane, self-pitying, mean-spirited, noble, funny, foreign, conceited, vain about clothes, and arrogant as all hell. He was arrogant enough to think that he knew better than the Americans how America should be.

He shot people he didn't like, he yelled at his employees, he liked the employees who yelled back at him, and the first time he got in a fight with his editor, Frank Cobb, Cobb quit. Joe said, "I liked that young man. I liked the way he swore." Long pause. "God damn it, go tell that idiot I will not LET him quit!" and then every time they'd get in a fight, Cobb would quit and Joe would say to people, "I suppose you know Frank quit again," and then Cobb would show back up for work the next day like nothing happened.

He once kicked Cobb off his yacht and abandoned him on the Jersey shore and made him walk home. The next day, Cobb showed up for work right on time (and no one's ever figured out how he managed that one). I love that.

I like him because when he was appointed Police Commissioner in St. Louis (which was a largely honorary, ceremonial post), he let the guys who served liquor on Sunday get away with it. I like him because he was the cruelest, most cutting man in an argument there ever was. He made grown men cry.  I like him because he lost his temper at the drop of a hat and was the best boss in the world to work for. People died for him. Literally. I like him because he threw things at people when he got really ticked off. I like him because he'd get antsy at the opera and then yell during the performance, "For God's sake, I'm dying of boredom. Get me out of here. Let's go."

I like him because it was on his paper that comic strips were invented (and from comic strips came comic books. Yep. The world has Joe Pulitzer to thank for the comic book. God rest his sweet, saintly soul).

I like him because he took a perverse glee in ramming it up the butts of the wealthy whenever he got dirt on them. He genuinely enjoyed sticking it to them. Even more so after he became wealthy himself. He would giggle with glee every time some new revelation about someone rich came out.

I like him because when he was in residence at Jekyl Island, and J.P. Morgan told him that attendance at the Episcopal chapel on the island was "strongly encouraged," he sent his personal physician, an obnoxiously outspoken atheist, to drop a five dollar bill in the collection plate, and announce loudly, "Mr. Pulitzer has now attended church."

I like him because when he was in the House of Representatives, he got blitzed one night in Washington, and was about to be arrested for being drunk and disorderly, and his friends told the cop, "This man is a member of the House of Representatives," and the cop said, "That holds no water with me," and they said, "But this man is Joseph Pulitzer, the editor of the World!" and the cop said, "Jesus, why didn't you say so? Let's get him home quick."

I like him because after he went blind, he would say, "Do you mind?" and then without waiting for an answer start feeling people's faces. Including the Secretary of State of the United States of America. I like him because he said to an employee, "How much do you weigh? Two hundred pounds? And you're only five feet five? My God! You'd better train down."

I like him because he was a visionary who couldn't see, a crusader with the soul of a carnival promoter, an uncompromising moralist who broke the rules every chance he got, a humanitarian who reduced people to tears, an adoring father who hated his kids,  an idealist who couldn't stand people.

I like him because he was the furthest thing from a hypocrite there ever was. I like him because he was irreverent as all hell. I like him because I can picture him standing at the gates of heaven and shouting at God Almighty for creating such a fucked up world.

He’s always been vibrantly, gloriously, horrendously, humanly flawed. He screwed up. A lot. And he knew it and tried to fix it.

Reading over this, I realize that, try as I might, I probably will not be able to do his character justice with my meager skills. The man is beyond my ability—and very likely anyone’s, since Dostoevsky’s dead—to capture accurately. But, as Bob Dylan said about folk music, “There’s magic, the Bible, and mythology in those old songs. I can’t hope to touch that. But I’m going to try.”

Perhaps there’s just something in my ODD-afflicted, naturally contrarian character that’s drawn to a guy like Joseph Pulitzer. But I’m not the only one. I recently read a biography of Richard Hofstadter, another famous contrarian—another perpetually, and probably by design, permanent fish out of water—and came across this passage, which literally made my eyes bug out of my head:

“[Hofstadter’s] office itself is large, sparsely adorned except for forbiddingly high history-stocked bookcases and a large lithograph of Joseph Pulitzer against the institutional light yellow wall.”

Perhaps Hofstadter just put Joe’s picture up out of gratitude—after all, he did win two Pulitzer Prizes. But I’d prefer to think he did it because this most discerning and critical of all American historians, like me, saw in Joseph Pulitzer a kindred contrarian and a flawed, but ultimately both lovable and absolutely indispensable American hero.

A Plea for National Disunity

I’ve mentioned it in previous blog posts, but there is a constant—and pernicious—tendency in our national discourse to blame the public. Whatever happens, it’s our fault.

Now, I don’t know if this tendency on the part of our media to excoriate the people is inadvertent or purposeful, but it has the very convenient effect of shifting both blame and attention away from the real culprits.

There’s a national childhood obesity epidemic? It’s the parents’ fault—certainly not the food manufacturers, who stuff our food full of trans-fats, high-fructose corn syrup and sugar. There’s a credit crisis? It’s the consumers’ fault, not the banks’ irresponsible and predatory lending practices, and their paid whores, the legislators who yanked away all forms of regulation.

And now, with the biggest budget crisis in our history looming and the credit rating of the United States of America downgraded like a college kid who ran up a bunch of debt on his MasterCard—again, it’s our fault.

Yes, American public, you did this. Damn you and your greedy, gimme-gimme entitlements and your low voter turnout. Why, you miserable sons of bitches would rather sit at home on your fat asses, watching “Hoarders,” guzzling cheap beer and gobbling Twinkies than come out and vote.

Well, malarkey. It’s true that the U.S. does have embarrassingly low rates of voter turnout. Even in the most hotly-contested Presidential election of modern times—2008—only 56.8% of registered voters actually bothered to do so. Barely more than half. And in the 2010 mid-terms, only 37.8 could be bothered to hit the polls. That’s pathetic, all right. But the real question—which I don’t hear, or read, people asking—is why. No one asks why people don’t exercise their right to democracy. It’s just assumed that Americans are too stupid, lazy, and apathetic to exercise their privileges.

But Americans aren’t lazy. We’re the hardest-working people on the planet. We spend more time working than any other nation in the world. And we’re not stupid, either. Its current woes aside, no sane person would argue that free and compulsory public education is one of the great success stories of the species.

The real reason voter turnout is so low is simple. We know damn well that whoever wins, it doesn’t matter. There just won’t be any appreciable difference in our lives. American voters, for all our blowing our own horn about Democracy, Democracy, Democracy, do not really have any choice.

America is stuck, seemingly permanently, with a two-party system. That by itself is bad enough. How in the hell can a meager two parties hope to represent the plurality of opinion and interests in the most diverse and heterogeneous nation in human history?

But it gets worse. We have two parties, but only one ideology. We have the pro-business party, and we have the crazy right-wing lunatic fringe pro-business party.

The Republicans have, throughout most of the 20^th century, had a lock on big business, which means more money for them. Which forced the Democrats to abandon small business, minorities, and labor, and, cap in hand, go begging from Corporate America. Which effectively turned them into the second pro-business party.

Some elected representatives may differ on non-substantive, window-dressing issues like abortion, gay marriage, prayer in school, DADT, and teaching evolution. But at the end of the day, when it comes to what really matters, our political process is tantamount to being forced to eat at a restaurant with only two dishes: fried chicken, and extra-crispy fried chicken. Neither’s good for you. One’s slightly less bad for you, but it really isn’t a choice at all. So you might as well just not eat—which is what most American voters opt for most years.

While some individual Senators and Representatives genuinely care about their constituencies, their parties as a whole do not. If anyone thinks the Democrats still represent labor, then riddle me this, Batman: where was President Obama during the recent walkouts in Wisconsin and Indiana? Why was the White House dead silent on the right to collective bargaining? Or if you think they still give a rat’s ass about consumers, why wasn’t Elizabeth Warren appointed? Why is Dodd-Frank dead in the water? Why did what’s called, apparently as a cruel joke, Healthcare Reform benefit only Big Pharma, the insurance industry, and for-profit healthcare providers?

When our only parties represent only the interests of the super-wealthy, then we no longer have a democracy. We have an oligarchy.

Neither most Republicans nor most Democrats of my acquaintance are whole-hog supporters of their respective party’s platform. They are, at best, uncomfortable members of their party simply because there’s nowhere else to go. Plenty of Democrats, for example, are pro-life. And plenty of Republicans despise Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Todd Akin, and the rest of those nutcases, who are pro-choice, and who know that Darwin, not Genesis, was right. But they have nowhere else to go.

The American political system’s devolution into a two-party, one-ideology system was bad for the country. What’s desperately needed isn’t a third party. What’s desperately needed are a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh party—parties which do not claim to represent ALL of their constituents’ concerns, and which DON’T take a stand on every single issue out there, but which, instead, concentrate on specific issues.

1. How about a children’s party—one devoted to protecting the rights and needs of the most vulnerable members of our society? A party that campaigns and pushes for better schools? Affordable and accessible prenatal and pediatric care? The death penalty for child molesters and the producers and consumers of child pornography? More stringent FDA regulation of children’s food? Increased paid maternity leaves?
2. How about an actual Green Party? A party that doesn’t take a stand on abortion, gay rights, and all the other stupid shibboleths of the (in so many goddamned ways ridiculous) American Left, but instead concentrates purely and simply on environmental issues, like subsidies for sustainable energy research, tax incentives for green construction and green rehabs, recycling, reforestation, protection of public lands, etc.?
3. How about an old people’s party, which campaigns for public transportation, reduced cost of medicines, geriatric research, and affordable and accessible retirement homes?
4. What about a Farmers’ Party, which campaigns for agricultural subsidies, more aggressive trade regulations concerning what’s imported and exported, and more federal funding for farmland reclamation and development?
5. Why doesn’t the Tea Party just spin off, create their own independent party and campaign for whatever the hell it is they want?
6. How about a genuine Labor Party, which campaigns for higher import duties on goods manufactured overseas, stronger collective bargaining laws, and against tax breaks for corporations which relocate their manufacturing facilities overseas?

I could go on and on, but you see my point. What I’d desperately love to see happen is the shattering of the two lumbering, out of touch, and imbecilic behemoths that we currently have into a zillion new parties that concentrate on specific interests and which don’t fraudulently claim to represent the interests, in toto, of half the population.

Not only would we have a political system that actually gives the people a voice—we might actually get something DONE. In countries with a multiparty system, in order to get legislation passed, they can’t simply engage in bluster, political posturing and theatricality and histrionics like our government. They actually have to practice politics. They form coalitions based on specific legislation. These coalitions are not permanent. They come together to accomplish something, and then break up, spin off, and re-form on different issues in different combinations. That way, the country and its people, actually make progress.

Wouldn’t that be nice for America? If we had a wide array of parties to choose from, we might actually progress as a nation. We might actually get representation that’s receptive to our needs and wants. And we, as a people, might actually become engaged in the process.

And you know, as long as I’m dreaming, I’d like a pony, too.