The Appetite for Scandal
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THE APPETITE FOR SCANDAL.
After all our moralizing, the fact cannot be denied that the public love a bit of scandal. In this respect we are all like a coterie of old maids sipping their tea in a contry village, and pulling their neighbor's character to pieces at the same time. While we protest against it we listen to it with none the less avidity, and in Scriptural phraseology, "roll it as a sweet morsel beneath our tongues."1 In nothing are we more hypocritical than in this very matter, The very people who loudly asseverate that they never, no never" read such stuff as the newspapers print converning private and personal matters, are the ones who, in private, gloat with the greatest delight over columscolums of solid type, chronicling prurient details and the most unmitigated indecency. Such persons should not prate too loudly concerning the licentiousness of the press. If they refused to read, editors would refuse to publish such matters. It is a mere matter of demand and supply. If the public eagerly buy and read filth and nastiness, the publishers will supply them with it without any very agonizing scruples of conscience.
We have in our mind's eye, as we write, the ridiculous and disgusting De Riviere scandal.2 Had the Atlantic Cable3 been successfully laid, the account of the enterprise could hardly have occupied more space in the New York papers than is devoted to this miserable affair. Half a dozen columns a day to record the details of a disgraceful scrape in which figure who ?—nobody whom the world had heard about before—there would have been some little excuse for it, then--but a couple of silly women and a broken down adventurer! This is the intellectual aliment which is furnished the public now-a-days, and from all appearances, this is what is liked. Truly a beautiful commentary on the progress of mental enlightenment and moral amelioration!
Let journalists chant jeremiads as they will, and let the sacred desk declaim as it will, people will read and be interested in what is piquant and amusing. But this De Riviere affair is neither one nor the other. It is the stupidest trash in the world, and how people can be found to read its long drawn-out details passes our comprehension.
Notes:
1. "roll it as a sweet morsel beneath our tongues" is a common phrase at the time of unknown origins. [back]
2. The De Riviere Scandal involved Henri Laurent Riviere (1827–1883). After surviving a duel with colonel Henry Maury (1827—1869), Riviere then absconded with another man's wife and daughter. [back]
3. The Transatlantic Telegraph was the first cable connection between the United States and Europe, built by Cyrus West Field and the Atlantic Telegraph Company. It sent its initial message—a note from the British Queen—in 1858 and, although the cable spanning from Canada's Trinity Bay to Ireland was only in operation for three weeks, had a major impact on transatlantic relations of the antebellum period. [back]