Word: lindberghism
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...picture of "Slim" Lindbergh that U. S. people should have had was of a rawboned farm boy with a fine, useful mind and a rare way with airplanes. He had an infectious grin that made vertical wrinkles up & down his weatherbeaten cheeks (as it still does). Around St. Louis, where he flew the St. Louis-Chicago mail run in fair and foul weather with calculated cunning, he had got along well-with reporters, had figured often in the news and liked...
...Lindbergh been a man like Admiral Byrd, had he courted glory, the public would have grown complacent about him soon enough. But because he had an honest literal personality and no need for glory, he was doomed...
...hero worship went on, slowly, almost imperceptibly, Lindbergh began to freeze up. People wanted to paw him and he did not like to be pawed. Women wanted to kiss him and he angrily pulled away. Because he kept a distance, the public became more hysterical. In St. Louis, after he had left an outdoor table where he had eaten-as heartily as usual-with fellow officers of his old squadron, he finally saw what he was up against: women broke through the lines and fought for the still damp corncobs which he had chewed clean and left in a small...
...knew he was a good flier and had been pleased to have the public acknowledge it, but matter-of-fact Lindbergh could no more understand the public's mass hysteria than the public could understand...
...this the U. S. press was largely responsible. Its original sin was omission-failure to tell what kind of man he was, to treat him with the customary cynicism with which it keeps public characters in perspective. Instead the press succumbed to mob psychology, augmenting it beyond belief. In Lindbergh's mind, however, the press became something far worse: a personification of malice, which deliberately urged on the crazy mob and printed lying stories about...