If there is an American journalistic canon, certainly Francis P. Church’s "Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus" must reside therein. In response to an eight-year-old girl’s plea to tell the truth about whether Santa Claus truly existed, Church wrote on Sept. 21, 1897, one of the most famous editorials in the history of American journalism. Whether or not he knew it, Church reached back to the origins of civic discourse and, with a mastery of Aristotelian logos, told little Virginia O’Hanlon and all of The New York Sun’s readers that Santa Claus existed “as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.”
Church’s response to a little girl’s plea illustrated the core principles of one of the least-studied of English language literary genre. Distinct from any other form of reporting, or even from other forms of mass media opinion, the newspaper editorial exists as a unique form of public discourse. In the chronicling and analysis of events that affect the human condition, the newspaper editorial is the sum of analysis. The editorial alone expresses the collective, considered opinion of those who present the day’s news on the rest of the newspaper’s pages.
Frank Church’s editorial illustrated the storyteller tradition in journalism and in editorial writing. A world in which Santa Claus is a “reality” is a construct of Church’s mind. Church’s reality of Santa Claus is created by what Terry Eagleton, in his book Literary Theory: An Introduction, called the “science of subjectivity.” Eagleton wrote: "The world is what I posit or 'intend': it is to be grasped in relation to me, as a correlate of my consciousness, and that consciousness is not just fallibly empirical but transcendental."
Church’s argument transcended empiricism in that he did not cite one single fact in his editorial; he appealed, instead, to little Virginia’s--and his readers’--belief that there are things in the world we cannot explain. He turned the use of empirical evidence upside-down and suggested that little Virginia challenge non-believers to prove that Santa Claus didn’t exist; the world she intended existed in relation to her.
Church then used the impossibility of proof to persuade his readers to believe that Santa Claus embodied all that is good in humankind. He concluded: "No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood." (This isn't a punctuation faux pas; it's the punctuation used in the original, reprinted below, which was acceptable at that time.)
Church intended that, when readers had finished reading his editorial, they believed in Santa Claus because they believed Frank Church. He knew what was good and right in the world, and he was an authority because he worked for The New York Sun. Scholars of rhetoric will recognize Aristotelian construction in Church’s editorial; his ethos comes from The Sun itself as a source of accurate information, the logos flows from his use of language--that is, he creates a logical argument by challenging disbelievers to prove him wrong, thus turning logic itself upside-down--and the pathos comes from his audience’s common belief in good things.
But enough of scholarly discourse. Here, for your enjoyment on this Christmas holiday, is what I consider to be the greatest newspaper editorial ever published. First, little Virginia's letter to the editor:
Dear Editor—
I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
Virginia O’Hanlon
And Frank Church's immortal answer:
Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
It's not his problem, so he says
I've met a man with no social conscience.
I don't mean he has no conscience at all. He would never intentionally harm anyone, and he may even be capable of compassion for victims of crime, disease, or natural disasters. I don't know whether he gives money to any non-profit organization or charity, although I doubt that he does; someone else’s misfortune isn’t his business, and for every dollar he pays out, he demands something tangible in return.
When I say he has no social conscience, I mean that he cares little or nothing for people put out of work by the ongoing recession. He sees nothing inequitable in the fact that the chief executive officer of a major corporation gets to keep his obscene salary and perquisites while overseeing the financial ruination of hundreds of people whose work earned for him the obscene salary and perquisites. Rather than bemoan the loss of hundreds or even thousands of jobs and condemn the idiocy of CEOs whose bad business decisions led to the layoffs, my acquaintance believes we should rejoice that some people got to keep their jobs.
This attitude is not a "glass is half full" optimism, it is a myopic view of a world seen in black and white. A person makes a choice to work for a company and must then endure the consequences without complaint, regardless of what those consequences are. A person who has no job is unemployed because of choices he or she made, pure and simple. This man's belief system is simply that people are destitute, hungry, sick, addicted, and oppressed because of choices they made. The world in which young teen-age boys are given the "choice" of joining a gang or being beaten up is foreign to him. He knows nothing of the world in which teen-age girls are raped and then forced into prostitution, or given a choice between selling their bodies or slowly starving to death. There are laws, he says, there are tax-supported entities for these people to go to, and if they choose not to go, well, that's their choice. Never mind that the entities are grossly under-funded and over-worked and that there is never enough money to adequately police them. He sees only the lazy and the spoiled accepting money taken away from hard-working men like himself; to him the welfare queen driving a new luxury car (the model changes from season to season) is an article of faith.
I've known this man for years. We aren't close, but we do see each other and spend pleasant time together a few times a year, and over all those years I have tried to persuade him that, as citizens of this world, we affluent, middle-class Americans have a social obligation to help the less fortunate. And over all of those years, he has obstinately clung to the absolute denial of that obligation. Even after being laid off himself in the recent lending/banking/financing debacle, he refuses to believe that the chronically unemployed do not choose to be chronically unemployed. Of course, after being unemployed himself for several months, he used his personal fortune to start his own business. Would that it were that easy for all of the laid-off administrative assistants, production workers, clerical staffers, and gofers that make business possible in America today. Too bad for them that their cardboard boxes don't contain a small pile of cash with which to start their own businesses.
After a recent and long conversation with this new entrepreneur I came to realize that he literally does not care that the vagaries of life can turn well-intentioned, hard-working, law-abiding Americans into victims with no resources. He chose, as a very young man, to begin saving and investing, and if others his age have nothing to fall back on when finding themselves unemployed, unemployable, and far too young for retirement, well, that was their choice. Never mind that the very industry that paid him so well all those years actually discouraged saving and encouraged life lived on the plastic card at around twenty percent interest.
This man's lack of social conscience wouldn't disturb me except that I see it more and more among people I know. The urban legend of massive waste in government has taken on almost religious significance among neo-conservatives and self-styled libertarians. They ignore the reality that the most massive waste in government is that caused by private industry gouging the federal government. Budgets get cut, sure, but that only results in government workers joining the ranks of the unemployed, not in crackdowns on or prosecutions of contractors who bilk the Treasury. Like a Scientologist espousing the ideology of Xenu, the new conservatives preach that slashing taxes and cracking down on government will prevent government workers from wasting all of that money and allow free enterprise to better enrich all of us. Or, at least all of us who choose to join in the prosperity.
This blind faith will continue to assure that money spent on social programs is largely wasted. Erosion of the American social conscience means a declining willingness to help our fellow Americans who fall on hard times. Refusal to even recognize, let alone act on, our social obligations to our fellow human beings can only worsen the political polarization and growing class struggle that, unabated, may well consume our civilization.
I don't mean he has no conscience at all. He would never intentionally harm anyone, and he may even be capable of compassion for victims of crime, disease, or natural disasters. I don't know whether he gives money to any non-profit organization or charity, although I doubt that he does; someone else’s misfortune isn’t his business, and for every dollar he pays out, he demands something tangible in return.
When I say he has no social conscience, I mean that he cares little or nothing for people put out of work by the ongoing recession. He sees nothing inequitable in the fact that the chief executive officer of a major corporation gets to keep his obscene salary and perquisites while overseeing the financial ruination of hundreds of people whose work earned for him the obscene salary and perquisites. Rather than bemoan the loss of hundreds or even thousands of jobs and condemn the idiocy of CEOs whose bad business decisions led to the layoffs, my acquaintance believes we should rejoice that some people got to keep their jobs.
This attitude is not a "glass is half full" optimism, it is a myopic view of a world seen in black and white. A person makes a choice to work for a company and must then endure the consequences without complaint, regardless of what those consequences are. A person who has no job is unemployed because of choices he or she made, pure and simple. This man's belief system is simply that people are destitute, hungry, sick, addicted, and oppressed because of choices they made. The world in which young teen-age boys are given the "choice" of joining a gang or being beaten up is foreign to him. He knows nothing of the world in which teen-age girls are raped and then forced into prostitution, or given a choice between selling their bodies or slowly starving to death. There are laws, he says, there are tax-supported entities for these people to go to, and if they choose not to go, well, that's their choice. Never mind that the entities are grossly under-funded and over-worked and that there is never enough money to adequately police them. He sees only the lazy and the spoiled accepting money taken away from hard-working men like himself; to him the welfare queen driving a new luxury car (the model changes from season to season) is an article of faith.
I've known this man for years. We aren't close, but we do see each other and spend pleasant time together a few times a year, and over all those years I have tried to persuade him that, as citizens of this world, we affluent, middle-class Americans have a social obligation to help the less fortunate. And over all of those years, he has obstinately clung to the absolute denial of that obligation. Even after being laid off himself in the recent lending/banking/financing debacle, he refuses to believe that the chronically unemployed do not choose to be chronically unemployed. Of course, after being unemployed himself for several months, he used his personal fortune to start his own business. Would that it were that easy for all of the laid-off administrative assistants, production workers, clerical staffers, and gofers that make business possible in America today. Too bad for them that their cardboard boxes don't contain a small pile of cash with which to start their own businesses.
After a recent and long conversation with this new entrepreneur I came to realize that he literally does not care that the vagaries of life can turn well-intentioned, hard-working, law-abiding Americans into victims with no resources. He chose, as a very young man, to begin saving and investing, and if others his age have nothing to fall back on when finding themselves unemployed, unemployable, and far too young for retirement, well, that was their choice. Never mind that the very industry that paid him so well all those years actually discouraged saving and encouraged life lived on the plastic card at around twenty percent interest.
This man's lack of social conscience wouldn't disturb me except that I see it more and more among people I know. The urban legend of massive waste in government has taken on almost religious significance among neo-conservatives and self-styled libertarians. They ignore the reality that the most massive waste in government is that caused by private industry gouging the federal government. Budgets get cut, sure, but that only results in government workers joining the ranks of the unemployed, not in crackdowns on or prosecutions of contractors who bilk the Treasury. Like a Scientologist espousing the ideology of Xenu, the new conservatives preach that slashing taxes and cracking down on government will prevent government workers from wasting all of that money and allow free enterprise to better enrich all of us. Or, at least all of us who choose to join in the prosperity.
This blind faith will continue to assure that money spent on social programs is largely wasted. Erosion of the American social conscience means a declining willingness to help our fellow Americans who fall on hard times. Refusal to even recognize, let alone act on, our social obligations to our fellow human beings can only worsen the political polarization and growing class struggle that, unabated, may well consume our civilization.
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