Dropping When Pregnant

THE SHAME OF THE ...

The Shame of the ...

The People Are Not innocent. That is the only
news in all the journalism Of These articles.

But do the people want good government? They Are Better Than the merchant and the politician? Our corrupt Government Is not, after all, representative?


The shame of the cities. Lincoln Steffens

No more claims that the newspaper and for the sole purpose of probing the civic pride of a little public embarrassment, the journalist Lincoln Steffens published in 1904 a collection of articles under the title I T shame of the cities, previously reported in the journal McClure.

Steffens was not a journalist either, was a muckracker, this line of journalists, from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, executed from the curricula of journalism in favor of patriotic airs figures, sensitive and poetic storytellers of the plight of our exile, but, yes, from his official car and the relevant safe conduct to leave behind the citizens columns. In short, an ethnocentric view that he locks the entire history of journalism this generic religion that changes the churches by parliaments and, needless to say, underpinned with the idleness of academics perpetuated for decades on the back of a subject.



The muckrackers , gathered many of them in the magazine Collier's Weekly and, in particular, under the leadership of Norman Hapgood as a director, are picker manure and pioneers of investigative journalism and reporting. In the early twentieth century attacked strongly against the shortcomings of the capitalist system, like corruption attacked politicians and businessmen, the poor conditions of workers and immigrants, child prostitution, the role of women ... always with the label at the expense of Communists and Socialists in a country that looked suspiciously. Upton Sinclair, Nellie Bly, Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Ray Standard and Riis, or contemporaries such as Ralph Nader. They all reported with transforming vocation - and also why not say, with some sensational - with the aim of shaking and make society aware of the inequalities and corruption that sheltered in her womb. A rebellious spirit which today are in the realm of ideas and testing, but no action journalistic reporting.

"I've seen the future, and it works," said Steffens in 1921 after visiting Russia. A time where the revolution optimism was understandable, especially in noisy and adventurous minds. Although as is always better to make new mistakes that perpetuate the old into unconsciousness, when Steffens wrote his memoirs (1931) Soviet enthusiasm had cooled.



The shame of the cities is a travel and representative of different U.S. cities - Chicago, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Philadelphia and New York-and shame that plagued with the approval of citizens, police and political corruption, bribery and hypocrisy of a town full of assumptions. A collection that, according to its author, is a solemn declaration and confessions embarrassed. Steffens will be questioned through the different articles on the underlying misconduct in a society full of achievements in the field of science, art or politics. If an entire society is responsible both for their achievements and failures, Steffens denounces how the set of individuals of a community rarely feels responsible for the latter, more ready to throw the blame immigrants or political. However, the ineffectiveness of a government representing the laziness of a dull town into single, familiar with the open bar and only remember the politician when you can not pay their bills. And, is there something more contemporary that descrispación and political indifference and ideological patterns beyond the hedonistic and abrasive personalization process? Hordes of citizens without a sense of history, released just for e l here and now, for the next weather report or messianic leader.



The American idiosyncrasy that connects businesses with freedom is also maligned as another symptom of the selfishness of those who deplore praise politicians and business. "Now, the typical American citizen is the business man. The typical business man is a bad citizen, I is busy, "Steffens wrote, referring to them as a major source of corruption. Businessmen and companies that cater only to the government in seeking the most favorable conditions for business and understand politics only as a business anymore, and so cuddle her shoulder so utilitarian. Nobody elected them, but have more power that millions of votes in collusion with corrupt government and a citizenry absorbed in his garden. "Do not try to Reform politics with the banker, the lawyer ...," says Steffens. Business man, penguin suits ... small-scale puppets quarry moral and interference by over 200 multinationals that dictate our day without sovereignty and dynamite the principles of representative democracy in the globalized age. Thus, the policy reveals a trivial device, without any weight in the government and political leadership. Then, as Chomsky says, the policy becomes "in the shadow of big business cast on society. "


With more than a century before, Steffens and warned about the clay feet of the new giant that made its way, and whose commercial spirit is the individual benefit and not the collective prosperity, credit and no honor. And so trade at your convenience, from the grocer to chairman of General Motors, with the assumption that others do not do anything in your situation, while the city requires credit in the same way that the addict is enjoined by dose, regardless of tomorrow. And one day, bitten by the fever of greed and a ladder Furthermore, corruption continues to greed as the dog to his master. Crisis? What crisis?

Steffens was a character who spoke innocently naive as the spirit and the will of the people shaping their government, if people persist in a lawsuit set to other ideals, more inclusive with inequality, political and politicians ended up molding to the new values. In other words, citizenship assumptions apply free market principles to politics for the politician, like the shopkeeper, new suits our tastes and inclinations. "But do the people want good government? They Are Better Than the merchant and the politician? Our corrupt Government Is not, after all, representative? "He asks Stevens. Are we not responsible for Zapatero and company leave your hands free when the bricks swept Spain and families into debt? Are not these families ultimately responsible for their greed, to go beyond their means, for wanting to live for the here and now ? "We cheat and we let Our Government Leaders Our loot it, and we let Them wheedle and bribe Our Sovereignty from us", then X-rayed Steffens.


"We Americans May Have Failed. We May Be mercenary and selfish. Democracy May Be with us and Corruption impossible inevitable, pero These articles, if nothing else importations They Have, Have Demonstrated Beyond Doubt That We Can Stand the Truth. "And we, will we one day the truth? Will the crisis be a virus from space? Will these journalists look to the navel and sell smoke? "There has never been so great a distance between what we think and what we write, even would say has never been more evident the difference between what we know and what we have. We are part of the encouragement of volunteerism and discretion. Somehow, and almost without realizing it, we have placed all in the Office of Industrial and Financial Public Relations, "wrote Gregory Moran in his last Saturday untimely.

The More Things a man is ashamed of, I is the more respectable.
George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman n, act I

We Need Never Be Ashamed of Our Tears.
Great Expectations. Charles Dickens,