Yellow Journalism (February 1897); Big Apple Fest

Sun Aug 8 03:58:36 UTC 2004

YELLOW JOURNALISM

I didn't have time to look thoroughly, but "yellow journalism" is, indeed, in the NEW YORK MAIL AND EXPRESS.

>From that great, expanding web site www.barrypopik.com:

26 February 1897, The Mail and Express (New York), pg. 4, col. 2:
Freaks of Yellow Journalism
Yellow journalism, through its junior exponent in this city, has achieved another triumph which is entirely in keeping with those that have preceded it. Most of the recent and notable performances of the yellow journalism have been political in character. So is this latest one. It is nothing more or less, in fact, than a Canton dispatch, printed in ominous blackness, purportin to give a definite statement of what President McKinley will do with regard to the Cuban affair after he enters the White House.

2 March 1897, Boise (Idaho) Statesman, pg. 7, col. 1:
The New York Mail and Express gives a list of head lines in a copy of a contemporary, there being 16 relating to tragedies of one kind or another.Continuing it makes this timely comment upon the modern school of sensational journalism: "These sanguinary head lines are broken by the two-column picture of a fiend arrested for the murder of his wife at Norwalk, Conn. By some accident, a single item of news containing no homicide was found on the first page, crowded, howerer, into an unconspicuous corner. And this is the kid of literary pabulum which the reeking presses of yellow journalism are striving to force into the homes of our citizens!"

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BIG APPLE FEST

As I've informed some of you, the Big Apple Fest (Remember the Cow Parade? This time it's apples!) will begin in New York on August 15th, or about a week. To educate the public, the Big Apple Fest-ers did what I, of course, told them never, NEVER to do. The Whore Hoax still lives:

http://www.bigapplefest.org/_about/about_index.php

History of the Big Apple
According to the New York Encyclopedia...

"Big Apple. Nickname for New York City, first popularized in the 1920's by John J. Fitz Gerald, a reporter for the Morning Telegraph, who used the term to refer to the city's racetracks; he had heard it used by black stablehands in New Orleans in 1921. Black jazz musicians in the 1930's used the name to refer to the city (and especially Harlem) as the jazz capital of the world. The nickname was largely unknown by the 1950's. It was revived in 1971 as part of a publicity campaign by Charles Gillett, President of the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau."

Gerald Leonard Cohen
Origin of New York City's Nickname "The Big Apple"

According to The Society for New York City History...

"In the early years of the 19th century, refugees from war-torn Europe began arriving in New York in great numbers. One of these, arriving in late 1803 or early 1804, was Mlle. Evelyn Claudine de Saint-Evremond. Daughter of a noted courtier, wit, and litterateur, and herself a favorite of Marie Antoinette, Evelyn was by all accounts remarkably attractive, vivacious and well-educated, and she was soon a society favorite. For reasons never disclosed, however, a planned marriage to John Hamilton, son of the late Alexander Hamilton, was called off at the last minute. Soon after, with support from several highly placed admirers, she established a salon - in fact, it appears to have been an elegantly furnished bordello in a substantial house that still stands at 142 Bond Street, then one of the city's most exclusive residential districts. Evelyn's establishment quickly won, and for several decades maintained, a formidable reputation as the most entertaining and discreet of the city's many "temples of love", a place not only for lovemaking, but also for elegant dinners, high-stakes gambling, and witty conversation.

When New Yorker's insisted on anglicizing her name to "Eve", Evelyn apparently found the biblical reference highly amusing, and for her part would refer to the temptresses in her employ as "my irresistable apples". The young men-about-town soon got into the habit of referring to their amorous adventures as "having a taste of Eve's Apples". The enigmatic reference in Philip Hone's famous diary to "Ida, sweet as apple cider" (October 4, 1838) has been described as an oblique reference to a visit to what had by then become a notorious but cherished civic institution."

The rest, as they say, is etymological history. The sexual connotation of the word "apple" was well known in New York and throughout the country until around World War I. The Gentleman's Directory of New York City, a privately published (1870) guide to the town's "houses if assignation", confidently asserted that "in freshness, sweetness, beauty, and firmness to the touch, New York's apples are superior to any in the New World or indeed the Old. Meanwhile, various "apple" catchphrases -- "the Apple Tree," "the Real Apple," etc. - were used as synonyms for New York City itself, which boasted more houses of ill repute per capita than any other major U.S. municipality.

William Jennings Bryan, though hardly the first to denounce New York as a sink of iniquity, appears to have been the first to use the "apple" epithet in public discourse, branding the city, in a widely reprinted 1892 campaign speech, as "the foulest Rotten Apple on the Tree of decadent Federalism. The double-entendre -- i.e., as a reference to both political and sexual corruption - would have been well understood by the voters of the time."

Society for New York City History, Education Committee

Peter Salwen probably made up the name "Saint-Evremond" from Charles Dickens' A TALE OF TWO CITIES. Salwen is a Dickens scholar.

"Ida, Sweet as Apple Cider" is a 1903 song:

(GOOGLE)
Ida, Sweet As Apple Cider. by Eddie Leonard and Eddie Munson, 1903 Lyrics
as recorded by Glenn Miller. Ida, sweet as apple cider Sweeter ...
www.mixed-up.com/lyrics/round/show.html?name=sweet-ida - 3k - Cached - Similar pages

This is not even an especially inventive hoax. I TOLD THESE PEOPLE ABOUT IT!  I FUCKING TOLD THEM ABOUT IT!!  AAAAAAAH!!