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Monday
One mark of a tyrant is killing those who bring bad news, which Donald Trump has just metaphorically done with the head of the Department of Labor Statistics. When Erika McEntarfer reported a sharp slowdown in May and June’s hiring numbers, Donald Trump responded, “We need accurate Jobs Numbers. I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY.”
No one outside Trump sycophants believe that McEntarfer has done anything other than report the facts. The move has shaken even those staunch Trump supporters who are in the business community. After all, they rely on objective government figures in their decision making. Many have noted that this is an action reminiscent of authoritarian leaders in third world countries.
There’s a long historical tradition of killing the messenger. In Parallel Lives (c. 100 AD), Greek historian Plutarch records an instance of the Armenian king Tigranes the Great punishing a bearer of bad news:
The first messenger that gave notice of Lucullus’s coming was so far from pleasing Tigranes, that he had his head cut off for his pains; and no man daring to bring further information, without any intelligence at all, Tigranes sat while war was already blazing around him, giving ear only to those who flattered him…
The upshot was that Tigranes lost several key battles to the Romans and found his kingdom eventually reduced to a client state.
My favorite instance of a messenger worried about delivering bad news occurs in Euripides’s The Bacchae. He has just witnessed the king’s mothers and aunts going full Bacchae—they’ve ripped apart a herd of cattle—but he wants full assurance that he won’t pay a price for conveying the news:
I saw those women in their Bacchic revels,
those sacred screamers, all driven crazy,
the ones who run barefoot from their homes.
I came, my lord, to tell you and the city
the dreadful things they’re doing, their actions
are beyond all wonder. But, my lord,
first I wish to know if I should tell you,
openly report what’s going on up there,
or whether I should hold my tongue.
Your mood changes so fast I get afraid—
your sharp spirit, your all-too-royal temper.
Fortunately for him, King Pentheus is no Tigranes or Donald Trump, at least upon this occasion. Pentheus claims he wants to hear the truth, no matter how unpleasant:
Speak on. Whatever you have to report,
you’ll get no punishment at all from me.
It’s not right to vent one’s anger on the just.
The more terrible the things you tell me
about those Bacchic women, the worse
I’ll move against the one who taught them
all their devious tricks.
Hotspur’s father in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2 agrees that messengers shouldn’t be blamed. In this instance, the messenger doesn’t have to plead for himself since Northumberland recognizes the situation:
Yet, for all this, say not that Percy’s dead.
I see a strange confession in thine eye:
Thou shakest thy head and hold’st it fear or sin
To speak a truth. If he be slain, say so;
The tongue offends not that reports his death:
And he doth sin that doth belie the dead,
Not he which says the dead is not alive.
Yet for all that, he acknowledges that this messenger will forever be tainted:
Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news
Hath but a losing office, and his tongue
Sounds ever after as a sullen bell,
Remember’d tolling a departing friend.
The leader that most resembles Trump is Shakespeare’s Cleopatra. Here she is threatening the messenger that brings news that Antony has married Octavia:
Strikes him again
Horrible villain! or I’ll spurn thine eyes
Like balls before me; I’ll unhair thy head:She hales him up and down
Thou shalt be whipp’d with wire, and stew’d in brine,
Smarting in lingering pickle.
Despite the messenger’s protest—“Gracious madam, I that do bring the news made not the match”—Cleopatra threatens to go after him with a knife. Yet even she proves superior to Trump since eventually she is brought to reason, observing she is degrading herself by threatening the man:
These hands do lack nobility, that they strike
A meaner than myself; since I myself
Have given myself the cause.
So although she is still spouting fire when she sends the messenger away, she at least insists on hearing what he has to say. Oh, and she doesn’t kill him.
Trump, by contrast, does the metaphorical equivalent of shooting the messenger. Thank goodness he doesn’t have the authority to do so literally.
