The conversation was, plainly , not going where Roosevelt had intended. “Your press incited–violence and class hatred. Do you deny that?”
“I don’t deny or affirm anything. Do you understand that? I’m here at your request, Roosevelt. Personally, I have no wish to see you at all, anywhere, ever–unless, of course, we share the same quarters in h*ll. so I must warn you, no one says ‘Do you deny’ to me, in my country.”
“Your country, is it?” Roosevelt’s falsetto had deepened to a mellifluous alto. “when did you buy it?”
“In 1898, when I made war with Spain, and won it. All my doing, that was, and none of yours. Ever since then, the country’s gone pretty much the way I’ve wanted it to go, and you’ve gone right along, too, because you had to.”
“You exaggerate you importance, Mr. Hearst.”
“You understand nothing, Mr. Roosevelt.”
“I understand this much. You, the owner–no, no, the father of the country, couldn’t get the Democrats to nominate you for president even in a year when there was no chance of their winning. How do you explain that?”
Hearst’s pale close-set eyes were now directed straight at Roosevelt; the effect was cyclopean, intimidating. “First, I’d say it makes no difference at all who sits in that chair of yours. The country is run by the trusts, as you like to remind us. They can’t buy me. I’m rich. So I’m free to do as I please, and you’re not. In general, I go along with them, simply to keep the people docile, for now. I do that through the press. Now you’re just an office-holder. Soon you’ll move out of here, and that’s the end of you. But I go on and on, describing the world we live in, which then becomes what I say it is. Long after no one knows the difference between you and Chester A. Arthur, I’ll still be here.” Hearst’s smile was frosty. “But if they do remember who you are, it’ll be because I’ve decided to remind them, by telling them, maybe, how I made you up in the first place, in Cuba.”
“You have raised, Mr. Hearst, the Fourth Estate to a level quite unheard of in any time…”

— Gore Vidal. Empire. Nay, I haven’t read it. Ought I to?

Today’s William Hearst, aka Citizen Kane. Do you have to ask?

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