Fake news went “viral” long before there was an internet
(And children got dangerous, mixed messages long before “gender theory”)
One of the most beloved and photogenic houses of worship in NYC is the Grace Episcopalian Church in Greenwich Village. Here’s a 2023 image of mine taken inside the cathedral:
At first glance, it’s not the kind of place you might associate with Phineas T. Barnum, but things are rarely as they appear.
In the 1860s, one of P.T. Barnum’s top attractions was Charles Sherwood Stratton, a.k.a. General Tom Thumb. The genesis of this stage name lay in the reality that Stratton was less than 3 feet tall. In his career, Charly (as he was known to friends) played 20,000 shows, performed for 50 million people, and visited two dozen countries.
Let’s pause here to contemplate. LONG before radio, TV, the internet, cell phones, and social media, a short man with a pithy fake name was a worldwide sensation without a single hashtag in sight. As we might phrase it today, he was essentially famous for being famous. The diabolical culture being peddled — then and now — by The Powers That Shouldn’t Be™ is frequently designed to distract and infantilize its audience.
Back to General Tom Thumb: When Barnum hired a female dwarf named Lavinia Warren, it was (allegedly) love at first sight. This (alleged) romance exponentially boosted public fascination with Barnum’s shows as the couple toured the nation before large, adoring crowds. When their engagement was announced, a very special venue was needed for what was dubbed “The Fairy Wedding.”
Enter Grace Episcopalian Church.
The church was no stranger to courting fame and fortune. Its congregation was a veritable who’s who of Big Apple royalty, and the affluent funded the building by renting pews that would be reserved solely for them. (Insert the Gospel verse of your choosing here.)
Grace Church was more than happy to reap the financial and publicity windfall of hosting Barnum’s latest sideshow. On February 10, 1863, the building was packed while the streets outside were in a near-riot state. It seemed the peons wanted to see what they’d been programmed to care about.
Welcome to the Society of the Spectacle, a century before Guy Debord and 150 years before “smartphones.”
A few more viral facts to ponder:
The crowd at the wedding included congressmen, famous generals, and Gilded Age icons with names like Astor and Vanderbilt.
At the Metropolitan Hotel reception, over 2,000 guests mingled as the bride and groom stood atop a grand piano to greet them in an 1863 version of Instagram-ready.
It was a poorly kept secret that many if not most of those 2,000 reception guests paid $75 a head (almost $2,500 today) to Barnum for their invitations.
From the reception, Tom and Lavinia headed directly to Washington to be hosted by none other than President Abraham Lincoln at the White House.
The couple then went on a world tour across Europe and Asia. In each location, they hired a different infant to pretend was their own. At the tour’s end, Tom and Lavinia joined Barnum’s infamous circus.
P.S. A slice of the wedding cake remains today in the Library of Congress:
For those who were unable to rub elbows with the influencers of their day, a new trend was created. “Tom Thumb weddings” became a thing. The basic concept was that very young children would dress up and pretend to “get married.”
We didn’t yet have teachers asking first-graders about their pronouns and sexual preferences. But we were gleefully confusing kids by having them do this:
The practice came and went over the decades but here’s at least one example of it being continued in 1988:
Coda: There’s so much to disdain and rebuke in this tale but I do find some solace in it. I view it as proof that today’s humans are not uniquely flawed, misguided, and gullible. We’re not facing a never-before-seen situation that cannot be reversed.
However, such a reversal must begin soon with a sharp, consistent awareness that we’re all extremely susceptible to the power of suggestion. Thus, we must work daily to deactivate our pride and resist the imposition of division, manipulation, and groupthink.
It doesn't have to be like this, friends. So, why don’t we do the work to find out what it feels like to operate with enduring intellectual autonomy?
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Mickey-great example of the immutability of human nature. In my experience, people think the Victorians were all sober and buttoned up. Meanwhile--they were the opposite. Wild and weird.
"It seemed the peons wanted to see what they’d been programmed to care about."
That sentence actually made me laugh out loud in that wry, horrified way ya do when you realise yeah: we're definitely being programmed.