Rascals

Before there was TBogg or The Poor Man or Sadly, No! or World O' Crap, there was Philip Freneau, who was born 255 years ago today.

Freneau will forever appear in anthologies of American Literature since, let's be honest, the 18th-century pickings are kind of slim. Those anthologies will reproduce "The Wild Honey-Suckle" and "On a Honey Bee"* and will discuss Freneau's place as the first significant American poet. Sadly, however, they rarely provide examples of Freneau's other, arguably greater, contribution to American culture as the first significant American practitioner of snark.**

Snark matters. It is a vital, necessary check on power without which democracy is not possible. Freneau knew this. He knew the value and the importance of mockery, ridicule and satire, of the finger and the Bronx cheer.

The quality of Freneau's snark was hailed by Thomas Jefferson, who credited the pamphleteering parodist with saving "our Constitution which was galloping fast into monarchy." (Freneau felt strongly about the Constitution — he and James Madison were college roommates at Princeton).

But you get a better measure of the prickliness of his pen from those who were more often his targets when he served as editor of a newspaper, the National Gazette. President George Washington called him "that rascal Freneau" and "a wretched and insolent dog," a "barking cur" who committed "outrages to common decency." Thus in our young democracy Freneau demonstrated a necessary element of what it would take to survive to become an old democracy.

This is why the cocktail-party culture of the Beltway media is a threat to democracy and freedom. Rascals and barking curs don't get invited to the cool kids' dinner parties, or invited back to the White House Correspondents Dinner. This is also why Stephen Colbert is a hero. That rascal Colbert stepped up to the plate when called upon and, like Freneau, committed the "outrages to common decency" necessary to prevent our democracy from "galloping fast into monarchy."

Snark may not be sufficient, but for a healthy democracy it is necessary. America needs its rascals, its barking curs, its Colberts and Stewarts and its clowns of the blogosphere.

The absence of snark is not civility, but monarchy.

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* The full name of which is actually "On a Honey Bee (Drinking from a Glass of Wine and Drowned Therein)," highlighting another of Freneau's contributions to American culture, the parenthetical title.

** The anthologies will sometimes offer a taste of Freneau's snarky side by including the antislavery poem, "To Sir Toby."

P.S. Today is also Christy Turlington's birthday. I don't really have anything more to say about Ms. Turlington, I just thought you might prefer a picture of her to one of Philip Freneau.