How Bob Somerby got to channel Socrates: "Plato described [Socrates] in the Seventh Letter as "without question, the most upright man then living." ... In 399, an Athenian jury condemned Socrates to death on charges of impiety and subverting the young. Again to quote Plato, in the Seventh Letter: "When I saw all this, and other things as bad, I was disgusted and drew back from the wickedness of the times..."

"There is one key point I should make crystal clear before beginning my account of The Greek’s detailed findings. At the time The Great Greek was channeled back to D.C., he had never even heard of a professional press corps. In his own day, of course, there were sophists and poets; and winded harriers would occasionally pound their way from the coast; but there was no institution expressly devoted to discussing the day’s crucial happenings. It intrigued him to think that a group of trained specialists might be devoted to crafting a great public discourse. Instantly it leaped to his mind, he’d later tell me: Perhaps this “press corps” could serve as a “guardian” class--could serve as a brilliantly-trained, skillful cohort that could rein in the murderous work of the sophists. For the very first time in his greatest of lives, he began to imagine that democracy might work--dared to dream the public discourse could be wrestled away from those who lived to distort and mislead us!

"I shuddered to think what The Great Greek would find when he began to read actual work of the press corps."

And thus began the Daily Howler.

How Bob Somerby got to channel Socrates: "Plato described [Socrates] in the Seventh Letter as "without question, the most upright man then living." ... In 399, an Athenian jury condemned Socrates to death on charges of impiety and subverting the young. Again to quote Plato, in the Seventh Letter: "When I saw all this, and other things as bad, I was disgusted and drew back from the wickedness of the times..."

"There is one key point I should make crystal clear before beginning my account of The Greek’s detailed findings. At the time The Great Greek was channeled back to D.C., he had never even heard of a professional press corps. In his own day, of course, there were sophists and poets; and winded harriers would occasionally pound their way from the coast; but there was no institution expressly devoted to discussing the day’s crucial happenings. It intrigued him to think that a group of trained specialists might be devoted to crafting a great public discourse. Instantly it leaped to his mind, he’d later tell me: Perhaps this “press corps” could serve as a “guardian” class--could serve as a brilliantly-trained, skillful cohort that could rein in the murderous work of the sophists. For the very first time in his greatest of lives, he began to imagine that democracy might work--dared to dream the public discourse could be wrestled away from those who lived to distort and mislead us!

"I shuddered to think what The Great Greek would find when he began to read actual work of the press corps."

And thus began the Daily Howler.