{"id":36072,"date":"2018-07-06T01:00:14","date_gmt":"2018-07-06T05:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=36072"},"modified":"2018-06-16T09:30:35","modified_gmt":"2018-06-16T13:30:35","slug":"qotd-afflict-the-comfortable-and-comfort-the-afflicted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/07\/06\/qotd-afflict-the-comfortable-and-comfort-the-afflicted\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: &#8220;Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>And there we have it in a nutshell. \u201cAfflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.\u201d That phrase, it should be pointed out, is not what \u201cthey\u201d say it\u2019s a journalist\u2019s duty to do. That phrase was satirical, uttered by the fictional Irish bartender \u201cMr. Dooley,\u201d the 1893 creation of <em>Chicago Evening Post<\/em> humorist Finley Peter Dunne. It was not intended to be taken seriously. Here\u2019s the phrase in its original <a href=\"http:\/\/www.poynter.org\/2014\/today-in-media-history-mr-dooley-the-job-of-the-newspaper-is-to-comfort-the-afflicted-and-afflict-the-comfortable\/273081\/\" target=\"_blank\">context<\/a>: \u201cTh\u2019 newspaper does ivrything f\u2019r us. It runs th\u2019 polis foorce an\u2019 th\u2019 banks, commands th\u2019 milishy, controls th\u2019 ligislachure, baptizes th\u2019 young, marries th\u2019 foolish, comforts th\u2019 afflicted, afflicts th\u2019 comfortable, buries th\u2019 dead an\u2019 roasts thim aftherward.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was a <em>satire of newspapers<\/em>, not a how-to manual for journalists. Yet that is exactly what Jackman \u2014 and, I would wager, the majority of his crusading colleagues \u2014 has turned it into. And let\u2019s just ruminate for a moment on what that means. Afflict (\u201ccause pain or suffering to\u201d) the comfortable (\u201cthose who are free from worry or pain\u201d). In other words, give pain to those who don\u2019t have it. What a motto, what a career description. Forget the five <em>W<\/em>s, forget just telling the truth. Journalists are here to give pain to those they feel are too pain-free. And of course the press takes it upon itself to determine just <em>who<\/em> is comfortable enough to deserve affliction. Now, make no mistake, in an active situation on the street, the police do, absolutely, wield the power. They have a license to take lives, and they have the muscle of the state behind them. That said, can we really call inner-city beat cops \u201cthe comfortable\u201d? Are we talking the Rockefellers here? Are we claiming that your typical parking-ticket scribe is a caviar-eating, yacht-racing, Faberg\u00e9-egg-collecting one-percenter?<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s why those who elect themselves the rainmakers and the pain bringers are so dangerous \u2014 we are at the mercy of their judgment regarding who among us needs the misery they have decided they must inflict.<\/p>\n<p>David Cole, <a href=\"http:\/\/takimag.com\/article\/afflicting_the_comfortable_david_cole\/print#ixzz4Mb6iPtMi\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Afflicting the Comfortable&#8221;, <em>Taki&#8217;s Magazine<\/em><\/a>, 2016-10-06.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And there we have it in a nutshell. \u201cAfflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.\u201d That phrase, it should be pointed out, is not what \u201cthey\u201d say it\u2019s a journalist\u2019s duty to do. That phrase was satirical, uttered by the fictional Irish bartender \u201cMr. Dooley,\u201d the 1893 creation of Chicago Evening Post humorist Finley Peter [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,41],"tags":[271,213,98],"class_list":["post-36072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-quotations","tag-ethics","tag-newspapers","tag-police"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9nO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36072"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36073,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36072\/revisions\/36073"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}