![[simpleton]](img/thesimp.gif)
Enlightenment
December 9, 1997
New ones Monday through Friday
On the Vanity of Innovation
Simpleton moves into the 18th Century
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There's good press and there's great press. Last week, James Poniewozik's
offhand plug for
simpleton turned out to be the most generous roll of the log we've received yet, defining
simpleton as a "spinoff," and thus catapulting us into the rarefied company of
The Jeffersons, The Odyssey, and Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. But best
of all, Poniewozik defined us as The Simpleton! For months we've been
trying to build an identity with willful repetitions of the title, and a (possibly more
pleasing) lower-case spelling "simpleton." Now along comes a media guru who spots our
true spiritual antecedents - Johnson's
The Idler
and The Rambler, Addison
and Steele's The Spectator, Madison's The Federalist . Simpleton's always
been kind of a pamphlet anyway, and most of our news
is at least two centuries out of date. Here's the old, improved The Simpleton:
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No. 55, TUESDAY, December 9, 1997
Nullumst iam dictum quod non sit dictum prius.
TER. [Eun., Pro., 41]
It is a truth frequently observed that a man sitting at his ease in his
study, with a glass of port by his elbow and an episode of The
Rockford Files before him, enjoys such a measure of felicity as
would be vain to endeavor to improve. Unencumbered by niggling demands
for novelty and change, untroubled by desire for blessing or dread of
calamity, free of the burthens of publick responsibilities, man is to be
seen here at his greatest ease, in the seat of easiest and most
commodious idleness.
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![[our forefather]](img/johnson-head.gif)
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![[our forefather at his ease]](img/johnson-tv.gif)
You are therefore to consider the attendant folly of those who would
have the instrument be other than what it is. Such a wealth of
genius
and obtusity has been
expended upon efforts to conflate two of
our elementary diversions, that it has been little remarked that this
tends toward the improvement of neither.
It is a figure of Hebraick wisdom that the time for leisure and the time
for employment are distinct.
Democritus
expounded upon an
evenness of temperament as the wisest course for human tranquillity. To
attempt to improve the elemental pleasures of television with the
ornament of electronic reciprocation is tiresome to the senses; to
aggrandize online compositions with the bejewlment of more boisterous
agencies confounds the scholar in his ease, and can only produce a
cholerick disposition.
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![[a state of felicity]](img/rockford-head.gif)
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The needless and willful concatenation of media that are not by nature join'd
can only result in mischief. What is suitable for the one is alien to the other, as
talk which is most pleasant in the coffeehouse would be turned out from
the Commons. This is a truth attested to in contradistinction to the just observation
that the amusements of the one instrument are in the main
superfluous, and those of the
other generally base.
Those who would join the two under the vulgar coinage "interactivity" are to be held in
no great regard. The lone scholar at his screen may happen upon a
piece of work as diverting as an
Orient Tale. The wretch who has no other comfort in his indolent hours can with little
effort enjoy an
entertainment in which
all the diversities of the world are brought together, the blessings of nature collected,
and all elements fit for human accommodation provided.
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Therefore, it is no instance of pedantry to admonish the wise that they continue
drawing such nice distinctions. Let each be employ'd in the occupation that suits him
best - to the pamphleteer his
pamphlets,
to the musician his fiddle and fiddlestick, &c. Unnecessary invention is an artifice
of the peevish, the thoughtless and the bilious, leaving industry foiled, hopes
confounded and genius
depressed.
I am, Sir, &c.
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