bitflipper
I guess many adhere to this timeless advice from one S. Clemens...
"Better to remain silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt"
That approach may have worked pretty good back in the days of when a newspaper would have had to hitched a ride on The Pony Express ...
If it made it across this great land of ours it would have had to survive looters , stage coach robbers , and Indian Uprisings ..
Who knows , maybe the Steam Breathing Iron Horse may have solved some of that ....
In any event , I'm pretty sure Mark Twain had it pretty cushy back in his era as a gifted social mouth piece ...
times do change ...
like it or not ...
metaphorically speaking ...most folks have as much privacy and social autonomy as a gold fish on display in a one fish sized fish bowl ...
Ah Yes , the transparency of , and the wonders of the instantaneous gift the internet has given us through social media ..
Now a days , the bigger the fool , the louder they talk and the more outlandish their behavior is .
Winds up equaling the more famous they can become for not having any talent ....
What trade Off
For all we know poor ole Samuel Clemens may of had a Cristal Ball in his stateroom on his favorite River Boat .
He may have wrote the way he did back then in an effort to try and save man kind from the level of Idiocy he foresaw coming .
Kenny