The Daily Morning Astorian

THE SATANIC PRESS.

A Satanic press is a sheet claiming to be a newspaper, but with no news in it, denying that there is any difference between a pulpit and a peanut stand, between the function of preacher and teacher, and the attitude and moral responsibility of the itinerant quack who sells cheap nostrums, sings flash songs, and expectorates coarse stories between sales. It is the reviler of all that is humane or gracious or dignified in human nature: it is vulgar and coarse in its instinct; its printed word is never helpful nor elevating: it is a corner gossip, printing anonymous scandals, ribaldry and covert or open obscenity, according to its commercial judgment whether there is a safe market for it within the law. It gives itself no concern about principles: is always silent (for its silence can be secured) when corporations or individuals betray public trusts or prostitute themselves for self. It never subjects candidates for office to any fearless analysis of their capacity or worth. Its concern is not with the defense of principles that underlie the public weal, but it is concerned chiefly with the dissemination of personalities, or questionable attacks upon those who evince contempt for its uncleanness. It is the buzzard, the carrion fly and the polecat in its public function; not a surly mastiff that is mute and inoffensive until burglars seek to break in and steal. It levies blackmail, directly and indirectly, on the weak, the timid, the unfortunate. It sometimes succeeds on the wages of its sin, just like other prostitutes, who lay by money and coin infamy into purple, fine linen and filthy lucre.

The Satanic press sometimes fastens transiently, like a barnacle to good men and noble causes, but, barnacle-like, it is sure to make the best ship unseaworthy, unless it be scraped off and a clean keel secured. The Satanic press has a good many readers, because those who do not reflect exceed in numbers those who do, but its following is the uncomplimentary crowd of listeners who always hang on the lips of scandal-mongers, and yet while malignant gossips always have a larger constituency than men of wise, discreet speech and useful action, this is not because it has any character, but because of its very lack of character.

The Satanic press is constructive of nothing but falsehood; it is destructive of everything that is not disreputable. It crawls, like a snake, on its belly over whatsoever men or things are honest, or of good repute, and then pointing to its own slimy track imputes the smutch it has placed on his scutcheon to the hand of the man who is stainless, and sometimes it capers like a mad bull in a china shop, soiling everything it omits to shiver.

These are salient features of the Satanic press that has a representative in every considerable town. The life of the Satanic press does not lie altogether in the support of those who are bound to it by the cohesive attraction of depravity. Men of decent lives and humane impulses sometimes treat the engineers of the Satanic press in the spirit of mean and truckling affability: they are as cordial in their welcome, nay, often more bland and deferential to journalistic shysters and social scavengers everywhere than they are to newspapers that honorably refuse to consider that a rag picker's hook and a whitewash brush are the noblest implements of their calling. Why should decent men be deferential, when in their hearts they despise these fellows, prodding every man's ash barrel, searching right and left for soiled linen, creating smut where they can not find it: persuading one man by fulsome personal laudation, and another by impending libels to support their enterprise. It is largely on the moral cowardice and moral indifference of reputable and decent men, who lack the moral courage to defy defamation, that the Satanic press leans for public toleration and secret support. We impute no sincere sympathy or admiration to this class of men, who know better, for this sort of journalism; nevertheless they suffer but just retribution for their weakness and cowardice, when the Satanic journalist soils them by his contact, or, in his capacity of hired mercenary, turns and rends those who carelessly pitch the pearl of their own self-respect within reach of such swine.

Let no man, who in his heart loathes a Satanic paper, consent to support it on the contemptible and cowardly plea that "I'd rather take it than have him abuse me," or on the worse plea that "I want to see the latest batch of smut and rot." That is the kind of weakness that helps the Satanic press to pull even its patrons down to lower levels and make the community like itself devoid of all that makes life honorable.