Is Tomorrow Hitler's? 200 Questions on the Battle of MankindKnickerbocker, H. R. (Hubert Renfro)
History
Is Tomorrow Hitler's? 200 Questions on the Battle of Mankind
Knickerbocker, H. R. (Hubert Renfro)
Europe -- Politics and government -- 1918-1945; World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945 -- United States
A. Very well, but this is merely a personal interpretation of what
built his character and formed his motives. I believe in the importance
of emotional causes for most of men’s attitudes, and so I should
like to mention these causes first. The young Lindbergh, as one can
discover from _We_, seems really to have been possessed of the virtues
catalogued by President Coolidge. He became the Lindbergh of today
only after his flight. First came the initial impact of the hysterical
reaction of the world to his accomplishment. It is bound to have
affected him, and it did, despite the fact that he appeared to the
public as still the simple, modest, somewhat shy boy who carried with
him on his flight an introduction to the American Ambassador to Paris.
It took the public a long time to learn otherwise, because from the
moment of his landing in Paris until only a comparatively short time
ago, Lindbergh was protected by the press of America in a way that
could happen only in this youthful country of hero-worshipers. When
America has a hero, he remains a hero of purest ray serene, and no flaw
may be found in him, and if any are privately discovered by newspaper
reporters, or others, they are carefully hidden. This is our standard
behavior toward heroes, but in the case of America’s hero of heroes the
inhibitions voluntarily imposed by the press upon itself were Spartan.
In newspaper parlance a sacred cow is an individual who for reasons of
policy must be protected from criticism. Every newspaper has its sacred
cows. Lindbergh became the Supreme Sacred Cow of all the newspapers
in America. Long after it became apparent to the working newspapermen
who came in contact with him that he had succumbed to the adulation
poured upon him and had completely lost that original modesty which
had endeared him to the American public, perhaps above all his other
qualities, and that he had, in fact, become impatiently egotistic,
and convinced that he “knew it all,” he still was represented as the
unassuming young man who aspired only to be left alone. He complained
that the press would not let him alone, gave him no privacy, harassed
him. Publicity, he declared, he hated worse than anything in the world.
Newspapermen nevertheless observed that he and Greta Garbo appeared to
have the same technique, and that he managed always to behave himself
in such a way as to receive the greatest amount of public attention.
The normal cycle of publicity received by a celebrity of the type of
Lindbergh was summed up by Sinclair Lewis. He and I were standing
at the bar in the Adlon Hotel in Berlin a few days after Lindbergh
landed in Paris, and the world had gone mad over him. It seemed as
though never had such adulation been poured upon the head of any young
man, and those who were not joining in the almost universal blaze of
hysterical feeling were curiously examining the blaze, wondering what
made the world go crazy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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