Th’ newspaper does ivrything f’r us. It runs th’ polis foorce an’ th’ banks, commands th’ milishy, conthrols th’ ligislachure, baptizes th’ young, marries th’ foolish, comforts th’ afflicted, afflicts th’ comfortable, buries th’ dead an’ roasts thim aftherward.

Finley Peter Dunne (1867–1936) was a Chicago journalist best known for his “Mr. Dooley” sketches—comic monologues in Irish-American dialect set largely in a saloon, where the bartender-philosopher Martin Dooley comments on politics and public life. This line comes from that satirical tradition at the turn of the twentieth century, when mass-circulation newspapers and powerful city editors were widely seen as shaping elections, policy, and reputations. Dunne’s joke exaggerates the newspaper’s reach into every civic institution (police, banks, legislature) and even into life’s rites (baptism, marriage, burial), reflecting contemporary anxieties about press influence and sensationalism.

The quip is a comic indictment of the press as an unelected power that claims authority over both government and private life. By piling up functions—running police and banks, commanding the militia, controlling the legislature—Dunne portrays the newspaper as a shadow government. The final twist (“buries th’ dead an’ roasts thim aftherward”) points to journalism’s capacity not only to memorialize but to judge, scandalize, and exploit even after death. The phrase “afflicts th’ comfortable, comforts th’ afflicted” also hints at the press’s self-justifying moral rhetoric, which Dunne treats as another form of power: the newspaper can present its interventions as public service while still dominating the public sphere.