Busy Body and Social Commentary

Upon reading The Busy Body letters submitted to the American Weekly Mercury to critique what he described as “the growing Vices and Follies of my Country-folk”, I could not help but imagine them in a modern context. Such broad criticism and observations were clearly designed to stimulate the minds of readers to question current issues that Franklin saw as being neglected in much the same way as modern media. He acknowledges the problem with attracting an audience as “the Generality would never read beyond the first Line of my Lectures, if they were usually fill’d with nothing but wholesome Precepts and advice”. People hate being told what to think and believe, so Franklin acquiesced to “sometimes humor them in their own Way”. Humor was his method of drawing attention while still making poignant comments about society, in much the same way that Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart do today on their shows.

Today people are often complaining about the general ignorance of the public when it comes to critically important information. I consider Vanderbilt students to be a fairly knowledgeable group of bright and educated young adults, but even in class the other day a student mentioned how much of the President’s speech was ‘over his head’. Media has the ability to put any kind of information, be it economic, moral, or philosophical discussion into layman’s terms- and if it makes people laugh, all the better. Franklin’s description of Silence Dogood as “courteous and affable, good humor’d and handsome, and sometimes witty” commentator on the faults of modern man and society seems a centuries old outline of Comedy Central’s late night political satire cast. It is no wonder that the basic method of feigned personalities used to turn serious topics into witty, ironic and above all relatable analyses has continued. Such an approach has performed an valuable education technique to enlighten portions of society that would otherwise remain ignorant of important issues.

The Prescience of "The Busy-Body"

While Benjamin Franklin’s anonymous “Busy-Body” letters are largely satirical, they display a remarkably prescient understanding of the human fascination with others’ private lives. Many aspects of our own media-driven culture can be seen reflected in the “Busy-Body” letters. The narrator of the letters explains to us in Letter No. 1 that while readers may run the risk of showing up in the letters themselves, “they shall have the Satisfaction, in a very little Time, of seeing their good Friends and Neighbours in the same Circumstances.”

This social voyeurism that Franklin describes can be seen in almost all aspects of modern life in various ways. The astronomical success of Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks allow us to peer anonymously into the lives of our friends. Tabloid journalism allows us to peak into the private lives of celebrities, and the rise of the 24-hour news cycle allows us to constantly monitor the lives of politicians and government officials, waiting for the occasional sex scandal to be revealed for the amusement and derision of 300 million citizens.

One particularly insightful moment comes when the narrator describes “a young Man of Modesty” who is virtuous enough to warrant a high position in life, but does not want to expose himself to “a Place where a pun or a Sneer shall pass for Wit, Noise for Reason, and the Strength of the Argument be judg’d by that of the Lungs.” Fearful of the unfair criticism of the masses, the man opts for a quiet, private life. This description seems extremely reminiscent of our current political climate. No matter how virtuous an individual is, fear of the exposure of some minor, youthful, scandal may prevent him/her from aspiring to public life. In the event that there actually is no scandal in this squeaky clean individual’s past, it is likely that one will be manufactured by someone somewhere.

While Franklin was writing over a century before the television and therefore, was probably not picturing anything like CNN when he wrote this letter, he knew enough to understand the human fascination with meddling in the lives of others. Our current media-driven society is just the logical result of this part of human nature.