I admit I smiled when it turned out that Martin Eisenstadt, the McCain campaign staffer who admitted being the source behind the “Sara Palin is an idiot” leaks, turned out to be Dan Mirvish and Eitan Gorlin, two idiots who actually took the time to “Punk” the media. But I smiled at the adolescence of the thing, not the inventiveness. This is like claiming credit for inventing the “Get the Ball-Where’s the ball” game with your dog. It’s been done before; a lot.
In August of 1835 the “Penny Dreadful” New York Sun published a series of articles entitled “Great Astronomical Discoveries Lately Made by Sir John Herschel…” John Herschel was a famous astronomer who was the son of a famous astronomer and using a new telescope he reported that he had observed on the moon “…nine species of mammalian …” including tail-less beavers that walked on two legs and lived in huts, unicorns and four foot tall people with bat wings.
Of course Sir John Herschel had made no such report because he wasn’t nuts. But neither was Richard Adams Locke (above), who was grandson to the philosopher and the actual author of the moon-beavers story. He was a one time editor of the Sun, and an acquaintance of Edgar Allen Poe - who claimed he knew of “…no person possessing so fine a forehead as Mr. Locke”. The “Punked” story of the moon-beavers sold an additional thousand copies of the Sun, which gave it a temporary advantage in its sales war with its rival New York Herald. Like I said, it’s been done before.
In fact, in an age of unlabeled Corporate Video News Releases (VNRs) padding out local news programming from sea to shinning sea it’s gotten easier to fool the fools, not harder. In Edgar Allen Poe’s day fake news had to be an inside job. Even Poe himself did it. Poe had already written “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “Murders in the Rue Morgue” but when he moved to Baltimore with a sick wife he had just $5 in his pocket. And as a hungry writer who has produced articles for such distinguished men’s publications as “Velvet” and “Velvet Talks”, (back in the 1980's they paid $125 for 1200 obscene words and $25 for three accompanying obscene “letters”) I can sympathize with Edgar.
Now, Edgar Allen Poe was “odd”. Both his parents died when he was young. He was adopted by a wealthy manic depressive patriarch who was alternately loving and vicious toward him. The result was that Poe became an un-socialized morose alcoholic who as a college student confided to his roommate that he had “joked” that he was going to murder their landlord, and the landlord had believed him: ha, ha. Poe was married in 1835, when he was 25, to the sickly Miss Virginia Clemm, who was just 13 years old. Sigmund Freud would have had a field day with this guy.
Faced with imminent starvation Poe undoubtedly sought out Locke’s advice, and probably based on what Locke told him, Poe wrote what later would be called “The Great Balloon Hoax of 1844”, or as I like to call it, “72 Hours of Hot Air”. The headlines in the Sun read, “Astounding News by Express, via Norfolk! The Atlantic Crossed in Three days!...in the Steering Balloon “Victoria”, after a passage of Seventy-five hours from Land to Land! Full Particulars of the Voyage!” According to the 5,000 word front page story, the plan had been to cross the English Channel suspended beneath a silk dirigible filled with 40,000 cubic feet of coal tar gas, but once airborne above Wales, and impressed with their “Archimedean Screw” propeller, the decision was made “on the fly” to sail to North America instead.
“We soon found ourselves driving out to sea at the rate of not less, certainly, than 50 or 60 miles an hour…as the shades of night have closed around us, we made a rough estimate of the distance traversed. It could not have been less than 500 miles…The wind was from the East all night…We suffered no little from cold and dampness…Sunday, the 7th, this morning the gale…had subsided to an eight or nine knot breeze, and bears us, perhaps, 30 miles an hour, or more…at sundown, we are holding our course due West...Monday the 8th, the wind was blowing steadily and strongly from the North-East all day…Tuesday, the 9th One P.M. We are in full view if the low coast of South Carolina. The great problem is accomplished. We have crossed the Atlantic – fairly and easily in a balloon! God be praised!”
According to Poe’s unbiased reporting, the day of publication the Sun’s offices were besieged from soon after sunrise till two o’clock in the afternoon. “As soon as the first copies made their way into the streets, they were bought up," wrote Poe, "at almost any price. I saw a half a dollar given, in one instance, for a single paper…I tried, in vain, during the whole day, to get possession of a copy.” And Poe was there, telling anyone who would listen that he was the author of the story, and…that it was false. Now why would he do that?
Poor old Poe had a number of personality traits that confused most people who liked him. For instance, he could not stop himself from maintaining contact with the writer Elizabeth Ellet, a carnivorous little “pot-stirrer” who made passes at Edgar in German. I mean, German has always been the language of love, hasn’t it? “Halten Sie mich schlieben, meine little Turtle Dove?” Doesn’t that make you feel all romantic? And then when Poe cut off all contact with her, she "sic’ed" her brother on him. Poe asked a friend to loan him a gun for the duel, and the friend bluntly said he didn’t believe Poe. They ended up beating each other up, over a woman who clearly didn’t think much of either of them; men. Sigh.
In fact, in an age of unlabeled Corporate Video News Releases (VNRs) padding out local news programming from sea to shinning sea it’s gotten easier to fool the fools, not harder. In Edgar Allen Poe’s day fake news had to be an inside job. Even Poe himself did it. Poe had already written “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “Murders in the Rue Morgue” but when he moved to Baltimore with a sick wife he had just $5 in his pocket. And as a hungry writer who has produced articles for such distinguished men’s publications as “Velvet” and “Velvet Talks”, (back in the 1980's they paid $125 for 1200 obscene words and $25 for three accompanying obscene “letters”) I can sympathize with Edgar.Now, Edgar Allen Poe was “odd”. Both his parents died when he was young. He was adopted by a wealthy manic depressive patriarch who was alternately loving and vicious toward him. The result was that Poe became an un-socialized morose alcoholic who as a college student confided to his roommate that he had “joked” that he was going to murder their landlord, and the landlord had believed him: ha, ha. Poe was married in 1835, when he was 25, to the sickly Miss Virginia Clemm, who was just 13 years old. Sigmund Freud would have had a field day with this guy.Faced with imminent starvation Poe undoubtedly sought out Locke’s advice, and probably based on what Locke told him, Poe wrote what later would be called “The Great Balloon Hoax of 1844”, or as I like to call it, “72 Hours of Hot Air”. The headlines in the Sun read, “Astounding News by Express, via Norfolk! The Atlantic Crossed in Three days!...in the Steering Balloon “Victoria”, after a passage of Seventy-five hours from Land to Land! Full Particulars of the Voyage!” According to the 5,000 word front page story, the plan had been to cross the English Channel suspended beneath a silk dirigible filled with 40,000 cubic feet of coal tar gas, but once airborne above Wales, and impressed with their “Archimedean Screw” propeller, the decision was made “on the fly” to sail to North America instead.“We soon found ourselves driving out to sea at the rate of not less, certainly, than 50 or 60 miles an hour…as the shades of night have closed around us, we made a rough estimate of the distance traversed. It could not have been less than 500 miles…The wind was from the East all night…We suffered no little from cold and dampness…Sunday, the 7th, this morning the gale…had subsided to an eight or nine knot breeze, and bears us, perhaps, 30 miles an hour, or more…at sundown, we are holding our course due West...Monday the 8th, the wind was blowing steadily and strongly from the North-East all day…Tuesday, the 9th One P.M. We are in full view if the low coast of South Carolina. The great problem is accomplished. We have crossed the Atlantic – fairly and easily in a balloon! God be praised!”According to Poe’s unbiased reporting, the day of publication the Sun’s offices were besieged from soon after sunrise till two o’clock in the afternoon. “As soon as the first copies made their way into the streets, they were bought up," wrote Poe, "at almost any price. I saw a half a dollar given, in one instance, for a single paper…I tried, in vain, during the whole day, to get possession of a copy.” And Poe was there, telling anyone who would listen that he was the author of the story, and…that it was false. Now why would he do that?Poor old Poe had a number of personality traits that confused most people who liked him. For instance, he could not stop himself from maintaining contact with the writer Elizabeth Ellet, a carnivorous little “pot-stirrer” who made passes at Edgar in German. I mean, German has always been the language of love, hasn’t it? “Halten Sie mich schlieben, meine little Turtle Dove?” Doesn’t that make you feel all romantic? And then when Poe cut off all contact with her, she "sic’ed" her brother on him. Poe asked a friend to loan him a gun for the duel, and the friend bluntly said he didn’t believe Poe. They ended up beating each other up, over a woman who clearly didn’t think much of either of them; men. Sigh.The point of all this is that it seems to me that idiots who spend their time and energy perpetuating a hoax on the public are hoping the public will not make a note to never-ever trust the idiots again, ever. As an example, the very next day after the balloon hoax, there appeared on the back page of the Sun the following notice; “…the mails from the south…not having brought confirmation of the balloon from England…we are inclined to believe that the intelligence is erroneous”. Well, that’s one way to maintain journalistic integrity. NOT!
Me, I’m willing to bet that Poe was paid $25 for writing the back page mea culpa. The publishing business hasn’t changed much in 200 years. And neither has the life of writers. Poe’s wife died of tuberculoses in New York, three years after the Balloon Hoax. And two years later the New York Sun, which sold for a penny a copy, was bought for $250,000 (more than $6 million in today’s dollars). That was the same year that Edgar Allen Poe died in Baltimore, flat broke as usual. Sigh.
Me, I’m willing to bet that Poe was paid $25 for writing the back page mea culpa. The publishing business hasn’t changed much in 200 years. And neither has the life of writers. Poe’s wife died of tuberculoses in New York, three years after the Balloon Hoax. And two years later the New York Sun, which sold for a penny a copy, was bought for $250,000 (more than $6 million in today’s dollars). That was the same year that Edgar Allen Poe died in Baltimore, flat broke as usual. Sigh.- 30 -
Jimmy was an Irishman, and so English –English was a second language to him, which may help explain his lyrics for “Every gal in Cons-tan-tinople, lives in Istanbul, not Con-stan-tinople, so if you've got a date in Cons-tan-tinople, she'll be waiting in Istanbul.” (The name was officially changed in 1930, at the behest of the Turkish Post Office.) 
I have a long held the image of the “Teddy Bears Picnic” being sung by that looming giant of economists, John Maynard Keynes. Can’t you just hear him croaking in his perfectly correct Eton English? “If you go down to the woods today you better not go alone. It’s lovely down in the woods today, but safer to stay at home.” I can.
Would you like to know what kind of an economist Keynes was? He was married to a ballarina, that's what kind of an economist he was. He was attracted to drama. Interesting, for a student of "the dismal science" of economics.
But things change over time, and eventually we Americans tried to pay for our “Great Society” and the Vietnam War, both at the same time, and both without raising taxes. You know what? You can’t do that, no matter how many voters may want to believe that you can, you can’t, as George Bush Jr. could now explain if he had two neurons worth of introspection .
The immediate effect was that the U.S. was plagued by both inflation and a stagnant economy, called “Stagflation”. Wages were stuck. The nation was losing jobs because the Federal deficits were gobbling up all the available dollars. Businesses couldn’t borrow, so they were shutting down. And, as I recall, that was when hamburger jumped from 35 cents a pound to something closer to a $1.25 a pound. It is not the same situation we face today, but at the time it was an untenable situation. But “Tricky Dick” eventually found a way to make it "tenable". He took America off the gold standard.
In the stroke of a pen the dollar was no longer backed by gold. That’s when the treasury stopped issuing real dollars and started issuing “silver certificates”. Read your dollar sometime. With out the limit of gold reserves on the treasury, the printing presses were free to work overtime, and suddenly you could print enough money to afford any war you wanted for however long you wanted.
This period also saw the introduction of the computer into the general economy, so a great deal of new wealth was also being created. But that only masked the growing instability of the new monetary system Nixon had placed us on. Economists call it “Floating Currency” but I call it the “Trust Economy”. There is no longer any gold behind your dollar, and, really, there is no silver, either. You trust that your dollar will provide you with goods and services of value.
I don’t blame Nixon for our current mess. Politicians are not hired to create perfect systems, just systems that can function for the time being. But what the sub-prime mortgage fiasco has proven, and the dot-com bubble proved before that, and the Savings & Loan debacle proved before that, is that without regulation there can be no trust. To quote Ronald Regan; “Trust and verify.” And to quote French President Sarkozy, “We must rethink the financial system from scratch, as at Bretton Woods”. And this time we (the United States) ain’t got the gold, so we ain’t making the rules. Those days are past. Or as Jimmy Kennedy put it, “No, you can't go back to Con-stan-tinople, been a long time gone, Con-stan-tinople, Why did Con-tan-tinople get the works? That’s nobody's business but the Turks.” Words of wisdom to ponder as we enter the woods again.
We begin in 1659, with a little tramp named Marie Madeleine Margherite D’Aubray Brinvillers. We’ll call her Maire for short. I don’t think she’ll mind. Marie was a tiny doll of a woman who seems to have committed no major public sins until she was about thirty when her husband introduced her to a handsome cavalryman named Godin de Sainte-Croix, to whom the husband owed a whole bunch of money. Hubby had to move out of the country to avoid his other creditors, and he left Marie behind as a sort of payment on account for Sainte-Croix. Marie didn’t seem to mind this arrangement, and neither did Sainte-Croix. Except, as much fun as Sainte-Croix had with little Marie, she wasn’t making him any richer. Where, oh, where was Sainte-Croix going to find enough money to live in the style to which he wanted to grow accustomed to? Sainte-Croix developed a multi-step plan. Step one was to encourage Marie to do some charity work. Step two was for Sainte-Croix to make the acquaintance of certain people with a knowledge of chemistry, such as a man known only to history by the name of “Auguer”.
Now, in the days before CSI the only way to prove poisoning - as opposed to just an unhygienic cook - was to catch the suspect pouring poison on the food, or get him to confess. This is why torture was so popular for so long. It never failed. No matter who you arrested, ten minutes with them on the rack and your case would be solved. But if your suspect was too connected to be tortured the only alternative was to lock him up while you slowly collected evidence. It might take decades. And during that time witnesses could be bought off, killed off, or just die of natural causes. It all made for the convoluted plots of some very popular French novels.
The cops were brought in. They uncovered a hand written confession by Sainte-Croix (Why do upper crust muderers always feel the need to write it down?). And they also found a list of names of satisfied customers who had been directed by Sainte-Croix to Msr. Auger. The list included little Marie, but it also included Madame de Montespan, who was Louis XIV’s mistress – which in pre-revolutionary France was almost a cabinet position - and the Duchesse of Orleans, Louis’s sister-in-law. Marie panicked. The cops were not going to torture the King’s mistress, but they would have no hesitation about putting a cutie like Marie on the rack. She ran off to her husband in exile. But she was now infamous and he wanted nothing to do with her. So Marie signed herself into a convent in Liege, Belgium.
This placed the pious nuns running the convent in a moral bind. They were sworn to provide sanctuary to all who asked for it, but on the other hand, how do you solve a problem like Marie? How do you catch a cloud of suspicion and pin it down? The good sisters consulted scripture and after due deliberations decided to rat out their guest. They allowed a cop disguised as a priest to enter the convent and while offering solace to the trouble little lady he escorted Marie right out the front gate, where she was immediately arrested. Marie was brought back to Paris in chains, tortured for a confession, tried in secret, and on July 16, 1676 she was forced to drink eight pints of water… and then mercifully she was beheaded. And just to be sure, they then burned her corpse. And that is how you solve a problem like Marie..jpg)
It looked like all hell was about to break loose in France, but just before it did...Louis XIV ordered all further investigations to cease. He shut it down. Nobody ever asked Madame Montespan or the Duchesse of Orleans how their names came to be on a list of people who had bought “inheritance powders”. But there was still one big problem oustanding: Msr. Auger. Who was he, and what did he know? And more importantly, did he have any plans to write his memories? And what does any of this have to do with Leonardo DiCaprio?
Nothing: like I said, the “Man in the Iron Mask” was really the “Man in a Velvet Mask” and that just sounds too fey for a novel. Ask yourself - why would the King of France keep someone locked in one prison after another for decades, required to wear a mask at all times in front of strangers and not allowed to converse with anyone, even with his jailers? It’s too complicated. James Bond villains have simpler plans than that. Why not just kill him? You don’t even need a trial, let alone a secret trial. By the middle of the 17th century the one thing France had a surfeit of besides starving peasants, was nobility with no morality. Louis could have knocked off every royal mass murderer from “Auger” to the Marquis de Sade and nobody would have said “Boo”. If you ask me this story is mostly a fantasy invented by Alexande Dumas. And wasn’t the truth just as entertaining as the myth? Not to Marie's relatives, of course, but for you? It was for me.
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