A little more kindness

"You may remember that in 1851 the New York Herald Tribune under the sponsorship and publishing of Horace Greeley, employed as its London correspondent an obscure journalist by the name of Karl Marx.

We are told that foreign correspondent Marx, stone broke, and with a family ill and undernourished, constantly appealed to Greeley and managing editor Charles Dana for an increase in his munificent salary of $5 per installment, a salary which he and Engels ungratefully labeled as the "lousiest petty bourgeois cheating."

But when all his financial appeals were refused, Marx looked around for other means of livelihood and fame, eventually terminating his relationship with the Tribune and devoting his talents full time to the cause that would bequeath the world the seeds of Leninism, Stalinism, revolution and the cold war.

If only this capitalistic New York newspaper had treated him more kindly; if only Marx had remained a foreign correspondent, history might have been different. And I hope all publishers will bear this lesson in mind the next time they receive a poverty-stricken appeal for a small increase in the expense account from an obscure newspaper man."

John F. Kennedy, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, NYC April 27, 1961

 Perhaps it's not the purest reason to treat others kindly, but avoiding the creation of disgruntled super villains is certainly an effective one. Zach and I have been indulging our inner child by watching classic Batman cartoons on Saturday mornings, and it is amazing how many villains got their start as geniuses who were knocked down one too many times. It's probably best to just stay on the safe side. 



(I'm not saying Marx counts as a super villain. He was kind of a schmuck, and many of those inspired by his writings haven't exactly been the best examples of humanity. But come one, the guy just wrote something influential and interesting, he didn't create city destroying robots or anything.)