Re: Death of the Liberal Class
Researching the word Columbia, I had made my way to the Wikipedia article on a magazine that had its run ended in 1918, “Puck”. So I checked, and there is no reference to it in the Index.
The single most acerbic, satirical, opinionated, muckraking and popular political magazine during its 40 year run.. But by 1918 it was history.
I smell a rat.
I find it no small coincidence that William Randolph Hearst bought the magazine in 1916 and just 2 years later, after 40 successful years, it was dead. Why would he purchase a tormentor of the establishment if not to kill it? Did he save the government the trouble of bringing the Espionage Act of 1917 and other measures to bear on it? Would that have caused something of a reaction among populists and progressives? But with Hearst engineering its demise, it’s just a business decision.
It seems that, given the rising ‘corporatocracy’ and the imperial ambitions of the government, that the clampdown and mass propaganda campaigns might have targeted this magazine. A scathing critic, a scorching journalist writing in a popular magazine that for all its flaws was the horsefly on the State? Intolerable (given your account of the conditions that prevailed during that Era).
I bring this to your attention as a possible occasion when media moguls and the Federal government might have been in collusion to determine and censor what We the People can read. Which would seem to be unconstitutional.
In the vain hope that I am mistaken….I offer “Puck”.
