The Banner, a great publishing paper of the days, presented
murder, arson, rape, corruption - with an appropriate moral against each. There were three columns of detail to one stick of moral.

"If you make people perform a noble duty, it bores them. If you make them indulge themselves, it shames them. But combine the two - and you've got them."

The Banner led great, brave crusades - on issues that had no
opposition. It exposed politicians - one step ahead of the Grand Jury; it attacked monopolies - in the name of the downtrodden; it mocked the rich and the successful - in the manner of those who could never be either. It overstressed the glamour of society - and presented society news with a subtle sneer.

This gave the man on the street two satisfactions: that of
entering illustrious drawing rooms and that of not wiping his feet on the threshold.

The Banner was permitted to strain truth, taste and credibility, but not its readers' brain power. Its enormous headlines, glaring pictures and oversimplified text hit the sense and entered men's consciousness without any necessity for an intermediary process of reason..

Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

I once told aditi I had neither patience nor need to write for the 'man in the street'; faceless, nameless individual who cannot and will not think for himself. That is the curse of the papers today, running amok with news not worthy of being read and hence not worthy of being written, yet still done because of the ubiquitous man. As if the sum of the experiences on the papers allows for vicarious living, mirroring them who are empty and need the churning energy of other lives to prop themselves.

This does not reflect badly on the papers; it reflects badly on society. The papers are the echoes. Of the hollowness of community.

-

Yves Saint Laurent, Fashion Icon, Dies at 71

The pied piper of fashion:

“My small job as a couturier,” he once said, “is to make clothes that reflect our times. I’m convinced women want to wear pants.”

Mr. Saint Laurent developed into a more conservative designer, a believer in evolution rather than revolution. He often said that all a woman needed to be fashionable was a pair of pants, a sweater and a raincoat.

“Every man needs aesthetic phantoms in order to exist,” Mr. Saint Laurent said at the announcement of his retirement. “I have known fear and the terrors of solitude. I have known those fair-weather friends we call tranquilizers and drugs. I have known the prison of depression and the confinement of hospital. But one day, I was able to come through all of that, dazzled yet sober.”