"The difference between burlesque and the newspapers is that the former never pretended to be performing a public service by exposure"
About this Quote
Stone’s jab lands because it doesn’t flatter journalism’s favorite self-myth: that exposure is automatically a civic virtue. By pairing newspapers with burlesque, he’s not just calling the press vulgar; he’s accusing it of a more slippery sin - sanctimony. Burlesque is honest about its transaction: spectacle for attention, titillation for tickets. Newspapers, Stone suggests, often run the same economy of sensationalism while laundering it through the language of “the public interest.” The punchline is ethical, not prudish: the problem isn’t exposure, it’s the pretense.
The intent is to puncture the newsroom’s moral alibi. “Public service” becomes a talisman that can justify gawking, scandal-chasing, and the weaponized leak. Stone’s line hints at a structural incentive: attention is profit, and profit is easiest to secure through outrage, humiliation, and the erotic pull of other people’s secrets. Calling it “exposure” lets editors sound like muckrakers when they’re really just selling the striptease of intimacy, vice, or failure.
Context matters. Stone made his name as an adversarial, skeptical reporter, famously willing to embarrass official narratives by reading the fine print and asking unglamorous questions. In that tradition, the quote reads as a warning about institutions that claim virtue while behaving like entertainment businesses. The subtext is darker: when newspapers confuse revelation with responsibility, they don’t just cheapen the craft - they train the public to treat politics as a peep show, and truth as whatever keeps you looking.
The intent is to puncture the newsroom’s moral alibi. “Public service” becomes a talisman that can justify gawking, scandal-chasing, and the weaponized leak. Stone’s line hints at a structural incentive: attention is profit, and profit is easiest to secure through outrage, humiliation, and the erotic pull of other people’s secrets. Calling it “exposure” lets editors sound like muckrakers when they’re really just selling the striptease of intimacy, vice, or failure.
Context matters. Stone made his name as an adversarial, skeptical reporter, famously willing to embarrass official narratives by reading the fine print and asking unglamorous questions. In that tradition, the quote reads as a warning about institutions that claim virtue while behaving like entertainment businesses. The subtext is darker: when newspapers confuse revelation with responsibility, they don’t just cheapen the craft - they train the public to treat politics as a peep show, and truth as whatever keeps you looking.
Quote Details
| Topic | Sarcastic |
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