Opinion : Media, reality TV and the Akhoond of Swat

As writers, we often approach a topic knowing what we want to say, but feeling that something is missing. So in our writing, we do some research, hoping to stumble upon the information that will help us clarify what it is we are thinking or feeling.

For me, today, it's the Ahkoond of Swat.

I can hear you now, all of you:

The Who?

Of Where?

No, you baseball fans, I did not mean to write "The Sultan of Swat," although I now understand the historical background of the Middle Eastern character who lent babe Ruth his nickname.

While it is not a part of the world that most Americans know well, Swat is the province where Malala Yousafzai lives. She's the teen the Taliban shot for trying to encourage better education for young girls. And the Akhoond of Swat was a ruler of that territory in the mid-19th Century. He became somewhat of a celebrity, known for his wealth and eccentricities. If he lived in this century, he would certainly have his own reality TV show. For a while in the 1800s, newspaper editors did all they could to find ways to write about this guy, even though he had no real impact at all on American life.

I have been reading books by and about Paul Harvey and Mike Royko, who were among the best in the media in America in the late 20th Century.

I have been looking for a way to say that I am concerned about the fact that modern media seems more concerned about silliness and celebrities than actual news.

And I found what I was trying to say with the Ahkoond of Swat.

The biography of Mike Royko mentioned Eugene Field, who wrote for the Chicago Daily News in the late 1800s.

While Royko is a hero for me (and countless other journalists), Field was one of the pioneers in the newspaper columnist field, and a hero to the journalists and young writers of the late 1800s. Many believe Fields is the first person to have his name put in his newspaper column. He wrote a daily column for 12 years before his sudden death at age 45 (he died in his sleep of an apparent heart attack). His biographers estimate that he published seven million words.

One of Fields' most famous poems dealt with the issue of news leaders who prefer silly, sensational pieces to real news. That poem was entitled, "The Akhoond of Swat."

I read that title, and immediately asked the same questions I mentioned above: The Who? Of What?

Turns out that the "Ahkoond" -- actually spelled Ahkund or Ahkond -- of Swat was a man who ruled in Swat. He became somewhat of a mythical saint for Moslems and a huge international celebrity, although it's hard now to tell how or why.

Yet in the late 19th Century, lots of American writers mentioned the Akhoond of Swat.

Eugene Field did not join this media circus, until one day when he had simply had enough. He got tired of American newspapers ignoring the issues that matter and writing about that "Ahkoond of Swat" silliness.

He was exasperated because editors did not want hard-hitting columns about the presidential race (Cleveland and Blaine were the candidates in 1884; they are mentioned in the poem). Instead the editors wanted safe, soft, silly words about far-away people that have no impact on issues that really mattered to America (much like too much of our modern media).

So Eugene Field wrote a funny, grumpy poem about it on Sept. 19, 1884:

The Ahkoond of Swat

When the writer has written with all of his might

Of Blaine and of Cleveland a column or more

And the editor happens along in the night

(As he generally does betwixt midnight and four)

And kills all the stuff that the writer has writ

And calls for more copy at once, on the spot --

There is none for the writer to turn on and hit

But that old distant old party, the Ahkoond of Swat.

Now the Akhoond of Swat is a vague sort of man

Who lives in a country far over the sea

Pray tell me, good reader, if tell me you can

What's the Ahkoond of Swat to you folks or to me?

Yet when one must be careful, conservative, too

Since the canvass is getting unpleasantly hot

If we must abuse some -- let us haste to imbrue

With that foreign old bloomer, the Ahkoond of Swat!

Yet why should we poke this insipid old king

Who lives in the land of the tiger and cane,

Since the talk we might make on the dotard can't bring

The sweet satisfaction of a Cleveland or Blaine?

A plague on these politics, statesmen and all

Who conspire to embarrass the editor's lot

And a plague on the man, we implore, who will call

On a fellow to write of the Ahkoond of Swat!

But vain is this fuming, this frenzy, this storm --

The printers care naught for this protest or that;

A long, dreadful hollow appears in the "form" --

And it's copy they want, with a preference for "fat."

So here's to our friend who's so handy in need,

Whose useful acquaintance too soon is forgot --

That distant old party and senile old seed,

That loathsome and pestilent Ahkoond of Swat

So, the next time you begin to feel exasperated by the silliness of the news that you see or read, and you wish that someone would PLEASE share some news that actually matters, remember the Ahkoond of Swat. And remember that although silliness is probably more prevalent now in this era of reality TV, it has been an issue for many in the news business for centuries.