Milton versus the Daily Mail

This year is John Milton's Quatercentenary. There are a number of celebrations and events to commemorate the 400th anniversary of his birth. But nothing could really mark him better than some evidence of his relevance today. And for that, the easiest place to look is in the Areopagitica, his defence of freedom of speech.

Milton would certainly have been appalled by the grotesque foppery of the likes of Jonathan Ross or Russell Brand. And if he had been a better shot, might have accounted for a few of their kind on the battlefields of the Civil War, but nevertheless, he defends their right to foppery on both moral and practical grounds.

"If we think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, we must regulate all recreation and pastimes, all that is delightful to man. No music must be heard, no song be set or sung, but what is grave and Doric. There must be licensing dancers, that no gesture, motion, or deportment be taught our youth but what by their allowance shall be thought honest; for such Plato was provided of. It will ask more than the work of twenty licensers to examine all the lutes, the violins, and the guitars in every house; they must not be suffered to prattle as they do, but must be licensed what they may say. And who shall silence all the airs and madrigals that whisper softness in chambers? The windows also, and the balconies must be thought on; there are shrewd books, with dangerous frontispieces, set to sale; who shall prohibit them, shall twenty licensers? The villages also must have their visitors to inquire what lectures the bagpipe and the rebeck reads, even to the ballatry and the gamut of every municipal fiddler, for these are the countryman's Arcadias, and his Monte Mayors."

Russ'n'Ross may not be the Daily Mail's idea of 'Arcadias and Monte Mayors', but they are 'the countryman's', or enough of them that matter. And the suppression of them and by implication all spontaneous humour would certainly ask 'more than the work of twenty licensers' to examine all the outpourings of every TV and radio broadcast and remove every heresy.
It is ironic that the media which Milton defends in his famous pamphlet are using that liberty to suppress the words of others. It believes we are too stupid and infantile to be able to cope with adult language heard on every street corner. Or as Milton puts it:

Nor is it [censorship] to the common people less than a reproach; for if we be so jealous over them, as that we dare not trust them with an English pamphlet, what do we but censure them for a giddy, vicious, and ungrounded people; in such a sick and weak state of faith and discretion, as to be able to take nothing down but through the pipe of a licenser?

Do the readers of the Daily Mail really trust it to be their Ministry Of Fun? Tragically, they might just. and Milton will weep for them. But one thing he will celebrate, and be dancing with Ray Charles round the celestial piano about, is the ability of almost anyone now to publish pamphlets to the world. Milton would have been a blogger, and The Areopagitica would have been first published online - not in the the Daily Mail.

Milton has a warning for Ross'n'Russ, too. It has to be quoted in full :

When I consider how my light is spent
E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide,
Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd,
I fondly ask; But patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite.

A little modesty goes a long way.

BAN ALL SLOGANS! BAN ALL SLOGANS!

One of the most bizarre developments of the internet is the use of personal publishing by those of a particular mindset to attack personal publishing itself. A classic nest of this sect being at Guardian United Talk, of all places. This hilarious thread showcases a cacophany of codgers blowing in the wind.
They simply don't seem to understand that the world of personal publishing exists and every blog, website, networking account, flickr account, 2nd Life account, Youtube account and even messageboard thread are all basically the same. All different versions of online publishing, and will go on until someone pulls the plug. And everything they published will be as different as the people who publish it. What is the point of objecting to others using the same medium they use to object with? They could criticise each post or issure or opinion on its own merits if they were as high-minded and sophisticated as they claim, but they don't, so they're not.
The comments function is there to prove me wrong.
There is a segment who merely rail against the general existence of blogs and all personal publishing, and the temerity oiks to publish whatever they want. Which is a bit like an old man getting annoyed at the vitality of the young.
And on messageboards, they constantly use their mean-spirited puritan negativity to try to distract the dialogue away from any constructive purpose. Like trying to dam a river by throwing a shopping trolley into it. Sadly, they are just classic reactionaries, and the louder they squeal, the more likely it is that universal publishing is working. The biggest joke is that they don't understand is that they are part of the process which offends them. Perhaps they feel they are the elite of global personal publishing. And that their opinions matter more, for some reason. Let's leave them content with that.
The simple lesson is, if you don't like it, don't read it. It's not costing you a penny, so while you still have your unexercised right to criticise, you don't have any right to complain.
Occasionally they will concede that 'a good writer will probably make a good blogger' - as if blogging was about writing, and as if the main point was to write 'well'.
The earth-shattering message behind the moth-eaten 'expertise' is that interesting words are interesting. That some people's opinions are more worth reading than others. The same head-banging platitude applies in print or anywhere else. With one proviso, anyone publishing in any media will get better at it. If they are denied access, as all but a few are in print, they won't. So overall the effect of personal publishing is to increase the general level of communications skills. Where this will lead, who knows, but some people are obviously feeling very worried about it - otherwise there wouldn't be such a level of hysteria at the word 'blog'.
When cornered, a few will eventually begin to talk about the validity of the individual opinions on blogs, as opposed to the medium itself, and parade their own unverifiable credentials while still being unable to ever find or quote what most offends them or say why. That is obviously not a condemnation of the medium, and is an implicit admission that without weblogs, those opinions wouldn't be available for criticism in the first place. The simple fact is that a blog is the sum of its content, it is possible to take exception to issues a post raises or opinions the writer expresses, but not with the medium, or even the 'blog' itself, unless every post is saying the same thing, which I've never seen.
As for the purely snooty charge of triviality, it not only betrays a deep contempt for the lives ordinary people lead, and the honest fun they get from expressing it in words or images and publishing the result, but also for the motives of the historian looking for the letters home of soldiers in the Crimea. Or modern journalists looking to find the truth past the barrier of 'embedded' reporting in Iraq or Afghanistan. Most of all, it is as suspicious of diversity and promiscuity as a Victorian beadle. The implication being that the internet is far too full of people above their station, who don't know their place, and who have no regard for the sensitivities of their betters. They refuse to be significant enough, and therefore all blogging is rubbish. That is pretty much the line.
This is dangerously close to a lurch back into primitive superstition. You see a black cat on the same day you fall off your horse - black cats are bad luck. The fact you were drunk has nothing to do with it. The devil in the shape of the cat is to blame.
I suppose this is a natural reaction in the face of such powerful medicine as the internet.
But great Sitting Bull must understand that the days of his people's mastery over the great lands of the buffalo are over. The great Iron Horse is here. And will bring with it many settlers who will share the land with Sitting bull and his people, or else.