"A little slop was poured into their long communal trough"
On CNN this morning they were discussing Trump's banning of reporters, such as the Washington Post's David Fahrenthold and others, and they mentioned the notion of other reporters showing solidarity with those banned etc.: CUPP: Well, and, Brian, just as a follow-up to Lynn's excellent point of backing each other up, Trump over the course of this campaign has banned a number of media outlets from press conferences or coverage.
In my ideal world of courage, if you are a similar media outlet, maybe you say then we're not going to cover you either. I know that is wishful thinking in the days of, 'well, if we can get an opportunity that someone else can't', but that, I think, would really send a message that you don't get to silence the press.
If you silence one of us, you silence all of us. And that's the danger that people need to understand when they look at Trump's actions.
Listening to this, I was reminded of one of my favorite passages from the writings of Harry Crews, from which I quote, and it reflects the state of media solidarity for access that I see today. Crews is writing about hog killing time:
A little slop was poured into their long communal trough, enough to make them stand still while Uncle Alton or his boy Theron went quietly among them with the ax, using the flat end like a sledgehammer (shells were expensive enough to make a gun out of the question.) He would approach the hog from the rear while it slopped at the trough, and then he would straddle it, one leg on each side, patiently waiting for the hog to raise its snout from the slop to take a breath, showing as it did the wide bristled bone between its ears to the ax.
It never took but one blow, delivered expertly and with consummate skill, and the hog was dead. He then moved with his hammer to the next hog and straddled it. None of the hogs ever seemed to mind that their companions were dropping dead all around them but continued in a single-minded passion to eat. They didn't even mind when another of my cousins (this could be a boy of only eight or nine because it took neither strength nor skill) came right behind the hammer and drew a long razor-honed butcher knife across the throat of the fallen hog. Blood spurted with the still-beating heart, and a live hog would sometimes turn to one that was lying beside it at the trough and stick its snout into the spurting blood and drink a bit just seconds before it had its own head crushed.
Just sayin'.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1609/18/rs.01.html
https://books.google.com/books?id=GxROLxIJM7cC&pg=PA119&lpg=PA119&dq=%22moved+with+his+hammer+to+the+next+hog+and+straddled+it%22&source=bl&ots=SFMMRMIgJF&sig=wI_rIWby5G7z0FJMR5IcClxNmHA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj0ua7T35nPAhVDbD4KHZ4EAVgQ6AEIJDAC#v=onepage&q=%22moved%20with%20his%20hammer%20to%20the%20next%20hog%20and%20straddled%20it%22&f=false
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