The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson – 

I lost a friend on Facebook this week.

Not a real friend, mind you.

Just a friend on Facebook.

The relationship was so short I don’t even remember his name. All I remember is that his profile picture was the logo for the Auburn Tigers football team.

Because of the way Facebook works, chances are I will never hear from him again.

Facebook has replaced the daily newspaper as the place people turn everyday for news, information and entertainment. If I had been writing for a local newspaper, I probably would have heard from him again, and again. He may have become a regular writer of letters to the editor criticizing me.

But with Facebook, poof! All it takes is a click to permanently lose contact with someone.

I don’t want to be the one to say this is totally a bad thing, necessarily. A lot of local newspapers were pretty bad. Really. They ran so much useless garbage at times that they had the reputation of being only good as “fish wrappers” or bird cage liners. Or they piled up in the corner and had to be thrown away, only to fill up the landfill, or be recycled. The daily news was old news the next day.

The web has much to offer readers beyond what the daily newspaper could deliver even on its best day, which in many cases was Sunday.

On Language

Back in the day when I read the print edition of the New York Times every day, or at least on Sunday, there was a regular columnist named William Safire. While he was a bit of a conservative politically, or at least a libertarian, he wrote a weekly column called “On Language.” It was a must read for many, including anyone who wanted to be a writer. It was a weekly vocabulary builder and a good read to boot.

I wish I had the stamina and knowhow to replace Safire and write about language every week, but that is not my main thing and there’s only so much one writer can do. But for today, here’s an example of what might be done.

Apparently the reason I lost this so-called friend may have been because of competing football loyalties (I went to Alabama, he was a fan of Auburn), or politics (I am basically a socialist democrat with a strain of civil libertarianism) or religion (I am not religious and I’m sometimes critical of Christians, especially Southern Baptists). Or it could have been about what he said:

“You don’t mind tooting your own horn.”

I said something about Facebook being a platform for promotions, which as far as I’m concerned that’s about the only thing it’s good for, and poof! He was gone.

In the continuing saga of documenting, among other things, the way the internet and yes Facebook has changed how we work and even think, this would seem to be a good example to talk about.

Do a web search for the phrase “toot your own horn” and you will see what I saw as I was researching this column Sunday morning.

The phrases to blow your own trumpet and to toot your own horn mean to brag about one’s achievements, to boast about one’s skills or successes. Blow your own trumpet is most often used in British English and toot your own horn is most often used in American English, though they may overlap. The terms come from the practice of announcing the arrival of an important guest at a formal gathering with a fanfare of horns. The idea is that a truly important person is recognized by others and is heralded, while a self-important person remains unrecognized by others and must therefore blow his own trumpet or toot his own horn. These phrases are often used today in a self-deprecating way when one wishes to modestly point out a personal success.

As in “I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but…”

A related phrase is to “beat your own drum.”

Maybe the guy was a Christian, and he took seriously the Bible verse from Matthew 6:2-4 2: “Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

Donald Trumpet

Maybe he supports president Donald J. Trump, who by the way, doesn’t hesitate to toot his own trumpet on a daily basis in speeches and on Twitter. Clearly he never heard the story about it being a bad thing to toot your own horn.

How many times in the past couple of years have we heard Trump say things like:

“I am very smart.”

“I have a very high IQ.”

“Only I can fix it.”

“I have done this, I have done that. Make America Great Again.”

“Blah, blah, blah, blah…”

His campaign slogan for 2020 is going to be: “Keep America Great!” with an exclamation point.

It is all very narcissistic, but this is not new for Americans. Social scientists started talking about the “Me Generation” back in the 1970s, long before Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was even born.

Many people on Facebook, especially Democrats, use a different name for Trump: “Drumpf,” which is a way to bash Trump as actually dumb, but it literally is the original family name for his German ancestors, a fact which has actually been verified by Snopes.

Never mind Trump. With his name, how could we expect anything different?

About four years ago, when I was camping in the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, I ran across a similar concept about not tooting one’s own horn while researching a story about Camp Rapidan, the original presidential retreat established by President Herbert Hoover in the 1920s, before there was a Camp David in Maryland.

Hoover was a Quaker. He and his wife practiced charitable giving but never took public credit for it, at least not by tooting their own horns. As the story goes, they believed in serving others without seeking credit. They made many anonymous donations to help poor people. Of course some of those people had their land taken away by the state of Virginia to give to the federal government to set up the national park, but that’s another story.

New Journalism

I’ve also had people criticize me on Facebook, even people I actually know in person, for injecting myself into news stories, as if that was a bad thing never done by “real” journalists. In response to one of these critics, I pointed out that the entire field of “new journalism” was founded on the very practice of putting oneself into the action of a story. I could go off on a rant here and provide many examples of this. But for today’s purpose, I’ll just throw out one name and move on: Hunter S. Thompson.

Do the search for “toot your own horn” on YouTube and you will find all kinds of marketing videos talking about the practice as an okay thing to do, in fact a necessary thing, if you want to build your own brand on the web with social media. I won’t bore you with those today. You get the point.

Pure Research

There is another strain of this thinking in the academic community. In pure research, scientists aren’t supposed to toot their own horns. Scientist who break out of this mold and write about science or the social sciences for the popular press are sometimes derided as “popularizers.” But how would the public know about all the great science if some scientists didn’t write about it in a way they could understand it?

You see my point.

Unfortunately, when I Googled (but not with Google, which I don’t use anymore for protest reasons) “Toot your own horn and William Safire,” the only thing that popped up was this: On Language: Hit Parade.

In the continuing saga of the slang term “hit,” a man who identifies himself as “a semiretired coke dealer” writes to bring us up to date on some venal vernacular.

“Although ‘Do you want a hit?’ is perfectly acceptable,” he advises, “much more common or fashionable are ‘Do a toot?,’ Do a blow?'” He speculates that the origin of “toot” is “because you toot your horn after doing it — in other words, your head is lifted like the top of a boat whistle.”

So that’s where that term comes from?

Take A Hit

I could say more, but I think it’s time for a break and a hit — at least off a cigarette. I don’t think Steve Bannon would hesitate to toot his own horn, or take a toot. He was back in the news this week in case you missed it.

Alabama Attorney Goes Public With Attempted Bribery Allegations Against Roy Moore, Steve Bannon and Breitbart News

Sorry if you think I toot my own horn too much. But what news organization doesn’t? Do you follow news on Twitter? Not only do they share their links, they repeat them over and over again and even pay to boost posts and buy ads to promote their platforms. This is all over the top beyond what they already do on TV, the radio, using telemarketers to sell subscriptions and still in print.

I don’t know of any other way to compete in this crazy world with everybody else out there tooting their own horns all day long every day. Maybe if I could get an army of activists tooting my horn for me, I wouldn’t have to do it myself. If I could afford to buy Russian bots on Twitter and dark money targeted ads on Facebook like Bannon and Breitbart News I wouldn’t need to toot my own horn.

If you don’t know all about that already, check this out.

How Wrestle­ Mania Trumped Intelligence in U.S. Politics

I do not toot my own horn to brag. I do it to tip you off to something important. Something that matters according to the journalism value of “impact.” You see we here at the New American Journal believe that value is more important than “prominence,” which is the value that gives coverage of the rich and powerful, celebrities, royals, precedence over issues of life importance to every day people.

Please forgive the occasional toot, toot. We don’t do it just to do it, like Niki.

Toot! Toot!

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