{"id":1138,"date":"2004-05-11T17:52:07","date_gmt":"2004-05-12T00:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=1138"},"modified":"2004-05-11T17:52:07","modified_gmt":"2004-05-12T00:52:07","slug":"stilted-perhaps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2004\/05\/11\/stilted-perhaps\/","title":{"rendered":"Stilted? Perhaps"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name=\"002273\"><\/a>The conversation was, plainly , not going where Roosevelt had intended. &#8220;Your press incited&#8211;violence and class hatred. Do you deny that?&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;I don&#8217;t deny or affirm anything. Do you understand that? I&#8217;m here at your request, Roosevelt. Personally, I have no wish to see you at all, anywhere, ever&#8211;unless, of course, we share the same quarters in h*ll. so I must warn you, no one says &#8216;Do you deny&#8217; to me, in my country.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;Your country, is it?&#8221; Roosevelt&#8217;s falsetto had deepened to a mellifluous alto. &#8220;when did you buy it?&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;In 1898, when I made war with Spain, and won it. All my doing, that was, and none of yours. Ever since then, the country&#8217;s gone pretty much the way I&#8217;ve wanted it to go, and you&#8217;ve gone right along, too, because you had to.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;You exaggerate you importance, Mr. Hearst.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;You understand nothing, Mr. Roosevelt.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;I understand this much. You, the owner&#8211;no, no, the father of the country, couldn&#8217;t get the Democrats to nominate you for president even in a year when there was no chance of their winning. How do you explain that?&#8221;<br \/>\nHearst&#8217;s pale close-set eyes were now directed straight at Roosevelt; the effect was cyclopean, intimidating. &#8220;First, I&#8217;d say it makes no difference at all who sits in that chair of yours. The country is run by the trusts, as you like to remind us. They can&#8217;t buy me. I&#8217;m rich. So I&#8217;m free to do as I please, and you&#8217;re not. In general, I go along with them, simply to keep the people docile, for now. I do that through the press. Now you&#8217;re just an office-holder. Soon you&#8217;ll move out of here, and that&#8217;s the end of you. But I go on and on, describing the world we live in, which then becomes what I say it is. Long after no one knows the difference between you and Chester A. Arthur, I&#8217;ll still be here.&#8221; Hearst&#8217;s smile was frosty. &#8220;But if they do remember who you are, it&#8217;ll be because I&#8217;ve decided to remind them, by telling them, maybe, how I made you up in the first place, in Cuba.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;You have raised, Mr. Hearst, the Fourth Estate to a level quite unheard of in any time&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Gore Vidal.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/037570874X\/qid=1084322886\/sr=8-8\/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i8_xgl14\/002-8892890-6428867?v=glance&amp;s=books&amp;n=507846\">Empire.<\/a>  Nay, I haven&#8217;t read it.  Ought I to?<\/p>\n<p>Today&#8217;s William Hearst, aka <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rottentomatoes.com\/m\/CitizenKane-1004218\/\">Citizen Kane<\/a>.  <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rupert_Murdoch\">Do you have to ask?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The conversation was, plainly , not going where Roosevelt had intended. &#8220;Your press incited&#8211;violence and class hatred. Do you deny that?&#8221; &#8220;I don&#8217;t deny or affirm anything. Do you understand that? I&#8217;m here at your request, Roosevelt. Personally, I have no wish to see you at all, anywhere, ever&#8211;unless, of course, we share the same [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-regurgitates-forward","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}