The real power
Beneath the rule of men entirely great
the pen is mightier than the sword.
The auteur
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton wrote that by-now
clichéd phrase. And yeah, I have a story. Or two.
I was in high school -- years ago -- when students at the university campus down the road picked up their new handbook; it included an introduction calling for the acceptance of homosexuals. Dissenters lit a bonfire, the flames desiccating dozens of the manuals into ash.
Well, I wanted to move people -- and it was obvious that words were the way to do it.
When I got my first journalism job, I wrote a radical feminist editorial about how all men are potential rapists. A male colleague flipped, ranting at me about what a load of offensive crap it was to paint all men as sick slimes.
It was the only editorial, out of the dozens that I sweated over, that he ever spoke to me about. And that gave me a final truth: words are mighty, they do get a reaction -- but only if you savagely disagree with the words.