Artists Aren't the Only Ones Who Are Impressionable

In discussing the propensity of artists for glorifying the powerful Upton Sinclair refers to--besides the hard realities of economic and political power that dictate the terms of worldly "success" for the artist--the mentality that makes so many artists glorify the powerful so very willingly, and in particular the impressionability that is part of the package. That impressionability, which necessarily includes a susceptibility to being impressed by position and the trappings of rank, the deference that power commands and the allure of luxury, leaves artists easily awed by those who have the benefit of all those things, and their work reflects the fact.

So, too, does this seem the case with journalists and with historians. While their work--properly done--differs profoundly from that of the poet or the novelist I suspect impressionability played its part in their choosing their particular line of work. One may add that like artists journalists incline to the telling of stories, with their desire to tell what they think is a good story often getting the better of what is supposed to distinguish them from the producer of fiction, namely that they are supposed to tell us What Really Happened. Indeed, all too often the journalist and the historian give the impression of being frustrated novelists as they go about their work--generally not to its betterment, as the cleaving of both journalists and historians to explaining the world in terms of the doings of Great Men, and their passing off the mediocrities and worse that hold power as such, reminds us constantly.