The newspapers that gleefully printed Julian Assange’s Wikileaks files of classified American documents are now trying to distance themselves from Assange because it appears they may now be held criminally liable. But who is truly at fault for the papers committing treason? I blame Gutenberg. Without the printing press we would never have heard of Julian Assange, or the New York Times, or much of anything else. It is all the fault of Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg, who invented the printing press in 1450, and thereby changed the world. Without Gutenberg there would be no newspapers to collude with an Assange to destroy the very society that sustains them. And so they die, the Guardian and the Times, along with lesser colleagues, kicking and screaming, graceless and pathetic, a pale shadow of their former powerful selves. My friend Johannes was beside himself with sadness and recrimination at what his grand invention had become.

 

 

I tell you sir, it’s all my fault

Had I not made my press

This Wikileaks would not be here

Unless I miss my guess

The printing press has led us all

Right down that primrose path

Where smears, conceits and downright lies

Pile up, just do the math

Until the day it all implodes

And readers say the hell

With all the lying lino types

Who print what now won’t sell

Johannes, boychick, I did say

It’s surely not your fault

Five hundred fifty years and you

Are part of the Gestalt

The printing press, I cried aloud

Has made us more than men

For gods require more than wine

It’s knowledge, do ye ken

That makes the world now what it is

Makes us a human race

Ah yes, he said, with sorrowed smile

But we have lost our place

The book of life is not by type

Nor not by keystroke writ

The Guardian, the New York Times

Are covered now with

Hold on! I cried, I’ll stop you there

Newspapers, yes, are dead

But books will ever sing your name

Without you naught is read

And children read no nurs’ry rhymes

And students pass no test

You’re not at fault for Wikileaks

Indeed sir, we are blessed

That you were put upon this earth

By God to spread the word

What matter that one tiny branch

Of printing is interred