Thomas Jefferson, who never was known for his patience, had run out of what little he had. “My God!” he cried in a letter to James Monroe. “How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy.”
Jefferson was writing in 1785. Two hundred years later, his irritated observation provides a text for our own time. We Americans are great ones for counting our liabilities. Those of us in the news business have been a help in that regard. We have contributed handsomely to the weaving of hair shirts. Gibbon might have been talking about our daily papers when he observed that history is “little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.” For us, good news is no news. Bad people make news. We of the press feed on the crimes, the follies, the misfortunes.
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