"Before we bury Williams in a shallow grave, let’s not forget that wit and jocularity belong as much to journalism as they do to comedy, and that just because Williams has stumbled we shouldn’t force all TV readers to wear long, sad faces to convey their seriousness. There’s a long journalistic tradition of “The Needler,” the reporter or commentators who addresses controversies with humor and satire. In a 1962 article, scholars Henry Ladd Smith and James Knox called the journalistic lampooners from the 1800s “The Needlers,” and identified singled out for praise the pseudonymous trio of Artemus Ward, Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby, and Orpheus C. Kerr. Yes, Orpheus C. Kerr was pronounced “Orifice Seeker.” (Some claim it was pronounced “Office Seeker,” but ignore them.)
The Needlers, write Smith and Knox, identified with their audience, and relied on the burgeoning presses of the times to reach the first real mass audiences. They weren’t gag writers, although they were all funny. What distinguished them was their “purposeful application of humor and satire” to the day’s issues. Ward attacked corrupt politicians and Cooperheads with his burlesques. Nasby, well before Stephen Colbert contorted himself into a right-wing vomit artist, created the literary persona of a “whisky-drinking, rabble-rousing, ignorant yokel” racist to puncture the intolerant and retrograde members of society. “He is so repulsive that he arouses strong sympathy for all the issues he attacks, which, of course, was the intention of his creator,” Smith and Knox write. Abraham Lincoln, a big fan, once said, “…for the genius to write these things, I would gladly give up my office.” Orifice Seeker did similar demolition on the Confederacy, but slung equally vicious barbs at Union generals.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/within-nbc-an-intense-debate-over-whether-to-fire-brian-williams/2015/02/11/8e87ac02-b22f-11e4-886b-c22184f27c35_story.html?hpid=z1
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