Word Balloons

It is coming again. It lurks just beyond the edge of what we can see, though it's there to be seen if one looks.
It has been just long enough for the world to forget; for the words to be just words, without the horror and misery that filled them. Once again, we will learn their meaning. We will fill up those words with meanings again; as if they were carnival balloons dragging along the ground, devoid of the gaseous-ness that buoyed them in our sight.
Now those who saw the horror and madness of times gone by are all but gone themselves. Their children and fathers lay silent in their graves bearing mute testimony. The rows of nameless crosses are only landscaping now, however carefully manicured.
Now the madmen hold the reigns, fingers poised above the switches; their drooling desires are plain to see. Because we are silently unknowing or uncaring, we will fill new graves with wasted lives. The wealthiest will hide in their protected enclaves, while they aim their madmen to send the poorest to fill the graves. The media will have a boom year and politicians will pontificate. Collection plates will overflow because it's good for all except the dead and mourning.
This time though, we will fill those word-balloons with gaseous horrors we have barely seen before; unthinkable, unprintable things that will shock and awe us until the next time. If there is a next time.

Perhaps they will rise far enough above the horizon that we will not forget, this time.

Afflict The Comfortable

 One of the more re-used aphorisms about "newspapers" or media in general states that it "...comforts the afflicted, afflicts the comfortable,..." It is one of my favorite twistings of language, which I believe I first encountered in "Inherit The Wind". How I wish the media still saw this as their mandate, instead of searching for and forcing sound bites. If only we could get back to the place where news was a loss leader. When News divisions didn't need to make a profit, we all profited.

Chicago humorist Finley Peter Dunne wrote a popular syndicated column featuring the distinctive voice of Mr. Dooley, using an Irish dialectical speech and spelling. The following appeared within a 1902 column titled “Mr. Dooley on Newspaper Publicity” Here, I've adjusted the original dialectic speech and spelling:

    "The newspaper does everything for us. It runs the police force and the banks, commands the militia, controls the legislature, baptizes the young, marries the foolish, comforts the afflicted, afflicts the comfortable, buries the dead and roasts them afterward." *

In November 1902 an Albuquerque, New Mexico newspaper printed a description of the jocular bylaws of a new secret society, which I am including for strictly geographical reasons:
    "In the line of benevolence they comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Don’t pay any old debts and let all the new ones get old as fast as they can. It is against their interest to pay principle and against their principle to pay interest."

* the original Irish dialectical quote:
"Th’ newspaper does ivrything f’r us. It runs th’ polis foorce an’ th’ banks, commands th’ milishy, conthrols th’ ligislachure, baptizes th’ young, marries th’ foolish, comforts th’ afflicted, afflicts th’ comfortable, buries th’ dead an’ roasts thim aftherward."


Source: Quote Investigator