On January 2nd, 1915, an advertisement ran in The Saturday Evening Post.
It was written by Theodore MacManus, who went on to found D'Arcy, MacManus, and Masius, one of Detroit's leading ad agencies for many decades.
The ad appeared exactly once.
It read:
THE PENALTY OF LEADERSHIP
In every field of human endeavor, he that is first must perpetually live in the white light of publicity. Whether the leadership be vested in a man or in a manufactured product, emulation and envy are ever at work. In art, in literature, in music, in industry, the reward and the punishment are always the same. The reward is widespread recognition; the punishment, fierce denial and detraction. When a man’s work becomes a standard for the whole world, it also becomes a target for the shafts of the envious few. If his work be mediocre, he will be left severely alone – if he achieves a masterpiece, it will set a million tongues a-wagging. Jealousy does not protrude its forked tongue at the artist who produces a commonplace painting. Whatsoever you write, or paint, or play, or sing, or build, no one will strive to surpass or to slander you unless your work be stamped with the seal of genius. Long, long after a great work or a good work has been done, those who are disappointed or envious, continue to cry out that it cannot be done. Spiteful little voices in the domain of art were raised against our own Whistler as a mountback, long after the big would had acclaimed him its greatest artistic genius. Multitudes flocked to Bayreuth to worship at the musical shrine of Wagner, while the little group of those whom he had dethroned and displaced argued angrily that he was no musician at all. The little world continued to protest that Fulton could never build a steamboat, while the big world flocked to the river banks to see his boat steam by. The leader is assailed because he is a leader, and the effort to equal him is merely added proof of that leadership. Failing to equal or to excel, the follower seeks to depreciate and to destroy – but only confirms once more the superiority of that which he strives to supplant. There is nothing new in this. It is as old as the world and as old as human passions – envy, fear, greed, ambition, and the desire to surpass. And it all avails nothing. If the leader truly leads, he remains – the leader. Master-poet, master-painter, master-workman, each in his turn is assailed, and each holds his laurels through the ages. That which is good or great makes itself known, no matter how loud the clamor of denial. That which deserves to live – lives.
This ad lives on today as the apogee of copywriting, an inspiration to every intern who ever wants to be in the ad biz for real.
This ad came again to mind as I watched the media's reaction to the Searchlight Tea Party.
The usual talking heads did their level best to disparage the movement and its message without directly addressing the content and underlying issues the Tea Partiers are trying to raise with the O-man's administration.
Alan Combs, Maureen Dowd, Chris Matthews, Rachel Madow, Keith Olbermann, Bill Maher and the rest have taken up the drumbeat, launching a continuous assault on the character, the morals, and the humanity of those supporting the Tea Party movement.
But none of them are addressing the issues the Tea Partiers are raising.
Far from it.
Instead of factual dialog about the ever increasing government encroachments, or the ballooning federal deficit, or the exploding unemployment numbers, or the actual economic and social effects of the O-man's healthcare bill, they'd rather talk about "tea baggers", "luddites", "Klansmen", or worse.
The media and the left portray Tea Parties as “anti-government” because it undermines a patriotic grassroots movement.
Tea partiers aren’t anti-government, they are anti-big government.
There's a difference.... a big one.
The “anti-government” theme is strong, cropping up in more than two dozen stories in The Washington Post and New York Times combined.
Very few of them mentioned the word “big” in reference to government.
They're focusing on the messengers rather than the message, at least in part because they know they can't refute the facts, and so, must belittle them by attribution.
Bill Maher deployed the strategy in calling tea partiers “cultists".
"The teabaggers, they're not a movement, they're a cult, and I'm going to prove it.
You know someone has fallen into a cult if you see these signs: One, cults have their own vocabulary.
Now, I don't speak shitkicker, but I know that in their world, freedom means guns, diplomacy means weakness, elitist means reader, and socialist means black.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the tea parties “Astroturf” before she went on to link them to Nazis.
“They're carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on healthcare.”
Later she backed off her complete attack and tried to latch onto tea party popularity claiming, “but, you know, we share some of the views of the Tea Partiers.”
Sure she does....
Playing the race card has become the left’s favorite move.
It trumps everything else and is virtually impossible to defend against.
Naturally, with an African-American president, crying “racism” has become a routine occurrence.
In today's America, anyone who disagrees with any policy of the administration (not just with the O-man) is automatically defined as a racist.
Any dissent has now become racism, especially when it comes to the Tea Partiers.
And it's not just the talking heads.
The Dems themselves have joined in, with their typical "tolerance".
Rep. James E. Clyburn, D-S.C., showed up in a column by The Washington Post’s Colbert King that claimed “Today's Tea Party adherents are George Wallace legacies.”
“It reminds me of that period in our history right after Reconstruction,” Clyburn said, “when South Carolina had a black governor and the political gains were lost because of vigilantism, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan.”
MSNBC Anchor Rachel Maddow had her own Klan spin.
“And as you could hear, the tea party convention crowd erupted in cheers at the suggestion, although, to be fair, it was sort of hard to tell exactly what the sounds coming from the crowd meant.
They were sort of a little bit muffled by, you know, the white hoods,” she mocked.
Ironic, when you consider that the only former KKK member in Congress is Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, a lifelong Democrat.
But, recall this portion of the ad:
The leader is assailed because he is a leader, and the effort to equal him is merely added proof of that leadership. Failing to equal or to excel, the follower seeks to depreciate and to destroy – but only confirms once more the superiority of that which he strives to supplant. There is nothing new in this. It is as old as the world and as old as human passions – envy, fear, greed, ambition, and the desire to surpass. And it all avails nothing. If the leader truly leads, he remains – the leader.
It appears the fundamental elements of the Tea Party dissatisfaction and frustration may be more widespread than the talking heads would have you believe.
Because it's the message that's gathering supporters, not the messengers.
"News is important information that may influence you... Noise is talk or buzz or some headline that prevents you from seeing a story clearly. News is useful. Noise is a distraction. Calling what's noise and news after the fact is easy." ---- Maria Bartiromo
"More people need to understand the games secular liberals play. Here's one rule-of-thumb: No matter how bad a story sounds - particularly if it sounds bad - recognize the pattern of defamation." =---- Marvin Olasky
