Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Newspaperman

What did you make of John McCarty, editor of the Dalhart Texan? How was he able to maintain his stubborn optimism and defense of the southern plains? What were his motives? And then he left!
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7 comments:

kc said...

I hated that guy with the fury of a thousand red-hot suns! He was egomaniacal, overbearing, manipulative and willfully, proudly ignorant, drumming up a load of false heroics that served no one but himself. He fancied himself as some kind of Bard of the Plains, with his pompous, self-important, juvenile prose, and profited shamelessly from the fact that his audience wasn't quite literate enough to know how full of crap he was. In a more sophisticated setting, he would have been promptly recognized as the petty hack that he was. When it became apparent that he had wrung every last personal opportunity from the communal tragedy, he selfishly moved on.

Good thing Timothy Egan — a real writer and a real journalist — came along all these decades later and exposed him. He might have escaped the mob justice that he deserved in the 1930s, but in the 2000s he's being pilloried before the American reading public in true National Book Award-winning style!

11:06 AM, September 01, 2010
Ben said...

I agree completely.

Really, the only possible explanation for his stubborn refusal to see what was happening all around him was that he saw it as an opportunity to promote himself. And I'm kinda glad that he left, because it made it even easier to hate him!

11:25 AM, September 01, 2010
Erin said...

So, you didn't care for him, kc? Hehe

I was giving him the benefit of the doubt until he started praising dust storms at beautiful and majestic. Those storms are killing people, you asshole! At that point he seemed borderline insane to me, completely blinded by his own hubris.

I've noticed in some quick browsing that other recent historic accounts laud McCarty as the ultimate "morale-booster" and say no one understood the tenacity and determination of Plainsmen like he did, and say his contributions were invaluable in helping people tough it out in the worst of days.

11:52 AM, September 02, 2010
kc said...

As we all know from high school, though, you can be a great cheerleader while being a terrible human being.

And cheerleaders don't win the game. The team does. And he was not, in the end, even a team-player.

12:06 PM, September 02, 2010
cl said...

I found him tolerable initially -- "a builder with a pen" -- that he had a sort of misguided patriotism. I mean, I could appreciate a person who sees that building a community depends on a forum like a newspaper and not just the real estate.

You know, the fact that he tried to crusade against the local whorehouse when the economy went south sort of made me think of the GOP -- unable to fix things of substance, distract your audience by spinning a moral dilemma that doesn't exist. And the printer sent him away! Hehe.

But kc said it best. And yes, Egan did a fine job hanging the legacy on him that he actually earned.

1:25 PM, September 08, 2010
Erin said...

Oh yes, I forgot about the whorehouse incident! It was extremely satisfying to see his sanctimonious moralizing rejected.

2:45 PM, September 09, 2010
kc said...

Yes! The whorehouse incident! Thanks for the reminder, cl — further evidence of his inadequacy as a moral compass for the community. And the printer rejecting it! How priceless is that? (and also a good reason for newspaper publishers to own their own printing press ... hehe)

3:29 PM, September 09, 2010

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