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Walter Lippmann
1889–1974 · 85 years Tier II
He gave the language its word for a picture in the head
Money and exclusion arrived together. Lippmann was the only child of a New York rentier whose fortune came out of textiles and real estate speculation, summered in Europe, and was confirmed at Temple Emanu-El rather than bar mitzvahed. At the Sachs Collegiate Institute he took 11 hours of ancient Greek and five of Latin a week. He entered Harvard shortly before turning 17, studied under William James, George Santayana and Graham Wallas, made Phi Beta Kappa, was turned down by the Crimson, and found the social clubs closed to Jews. He joined the Socialist Party alongside Sinclair Lewis, and in 1911 went to Schenectady as secretary to the first Socialist mayor in the state. He quit after four months, having decided the programs were not socialism.
He was 24 when he helped found The New Republic in 1914 with Herbert Croly and Walter Weyl. Commissioned an Army captain in June 1918, he was attached to Colonel Edward House's staff and worked on the drafting of Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, while warning the president that censorship should never go to anyone unacquainted with the long history of suppression. Back home, he and Charles Merz counted the New York Times's errors on the Bolshevik Revolution and published the tally. Public Opinion followed in 1922. It is where the modern sense of the word stereotype comes from, along with the bewildered herd and the manufacture of consent — his argument that people make up their minds before they define the facts, and that a specialized class must therefore steer. John Dewey published his answer in 1927.
On February 12, 1942, his column Today and Tomorrow ran in the Washington Post under the heading The Fifth Column on the Coast, warning of what Japanese Americans on the Pacific shore might do. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 seven days later, and roughly 112,000 people were removed from their homes, two thirds of them citizens. The man who had taught the language its word for a mental picture standing in for a fact had supplied one. The private ledger ran the same way. His only close friend was Hamilton Fish Armstrong, the editor of Foreign Affairs. Lippmann was involved with Armstrong's wife, Helen, and a European hotel forwarded the love letters to the wrong Mr. Armstrong. Faye Albertson divorced him, he married Helen in 1938, and the friendship and the Foreign Affairs connection were finished.
Lyndon Johnson gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in September 1964 and then lost him over Vietnam. He gave up the column in 1967 and died of cardiac arrest in New York on December 14, 1974, ten months after Helen. His name is on the Harvard house that holds the Nieman Foundation. The ideas have had a stranger second life than the man. Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman lifted the manufacture of consent out of Public Opinion in 1988 and aimed it back at the press. Communication departments have been re-arguing him against Dewey since the late 1980s. And the meeting convened in Paris in his honor in 1938 is where Alexander Rustow coined the word neoliberalism.
Lifespan
Walter Lippmann's life against the full span of the corpus.
Notable works
-
The New Republic
company
Founded with Herbert Croly and Walter Weyl when Lippmann was 24 1914 -
A Test of the News
article
Written with Charles Merz — a count of the New York Times's errors on the Bolshevik Revolution 1920 -
Public Opinion
book
Called the founding book of modern journalism and of American media studies 1922 -
The Phantom Public
book
The competent public, he wrote, is a false ideal 1925 -
The Good Society
book
The book behind the 1938 Paris colloquium that produced the word neoliberalism 1937 -
The Cold War
book
Answering George Kennan, and putting the phrase into general circulation 1947
Life in brief
with age at each point- September 23, 1889 aged 0 Born on the Upper East Side, the only child of a rentier
- 1911 aged ~22 Serves four months as secretary to the Socialist mayor of Schenectady He resigned, finding the programs worthwhile but inadequate as socialism.
- 1914 aged ~25 Helps found The New Republic
- June 28, 1918 aged 28 Commissioned an Army captain and posted to intelligence in France He was attached to Colonel House and helped draft the Fourteen Points.
- 1922 aged ~33 Publishes Public Opinion The book that gave stereotype its modern meaning.
- 1938 aged ~49 Marries Helen Byrne Armstrong, the wife of his closest friend
- February 12, 1942 aged 52 Publishes The Fifth Column on the Coast in the Washington Post Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 seven days later.
- September 14, 1964 aged 74 Lyndon Johnson gives him the Presidential Medal of Freedom They fell out over Vietnam soon afterward.
- December 14, 1974 aged 85 Dies in New York of cardiac arrest at 85
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