libraries, to open vague vistas of future benevolence; all this, which
goes on unrebuked, is bribery and nothing else. But a man has got the
right to go to another free man and ask him with civility whether he
will vote for him. The information can be asked, granted, or refused
without any loss of dignity on either side, which is more than can be
said of a park. It is the same with the place of interviewing in
journalism. In a trade where there are labyrinths of insincerity,
interviewing is about the most simple and the most sincere thing there
is. The canvasser, when he wants to know a man's opinions, goes and asks
him. It may be a bore; but it is about as plain and straight a thing as
he could do. So the interviewer, when he wants to know a man's opinions,
goes and asks him. Again, it may be a bore; but again, it is about as
plain and straight as anything could be. But all the other real and
systematic cynicisms of our journalism pass without being vituperated
and even without being known--the financial motives of policy, the
misleading posters, the suppression of just letters of complaint. A
statement about a man may be infamously untrue, but it is read calmly.
But a statement by a man to an interviewer is felt as indefensibly
vulgar. That the paper should misrepresent him is nothing; that he
should represent himself is bad taste. The whole error in both cases
lies in the fact that the refined persons are attacking politics and
journalism on the ground of vulgarity. Of course, politics and
journalism are, as it happens, very vulgar. But their vulgarity is not
the worst thing about them. Things are so bad with both that by this
time their vulgarity is the best thing about them. Their vulgarity is at
least a noisy thing; and their great danger is that silence that always
comes before decay. The conversational persuasion at elections is
perfectly human and rational; it is the silent persuasions that are
utterly damnable.