Fourth Estate

One sometimes hears the phrase "Fourth Estate" employed casually as a synonym for "the press."

Or,sometimes not. In one of the bulletin boards where I go to vent, a conservative fellow expressed his unhappiness that the "Third Estate" had sided with Obama. Evidently he, too, meant "the press," tried to seem elegant, and ended up saying something very much at odds with what he meant.

Both terms derive their continued significance from 18th century French history. When Louis XVI called the "Estates General" together to address the budget crisis in May 1789, his expectation was that they would meet and deliberate separately. The first estate was the clergy, the second the nobility, the third the lower classes (in practice, the most well-off of the non-nobles, the bourgeoisie).

Once convened, though, things went badly awry for Louis, within two months the Third Estate was calling itself the Constituent Assembly and deliberately ignoring the other two -- and a mob supportive of that revolutionary decision was heading for the Bastille.

Presumably he didn't mean to concede that the "3d estate" is on Obama's side. But that would mean that Obama is playing the part of who ... Marat? Who is Louis XVI this time around?

As to the 4th estate, the usual story is that years after the French Revolution, British parliamentarian Edmund Burke, giving a speech in the House of Commons, looked up at the gallery and saw reporters busy scribbling down his words. he said: "Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, and they are more important than the other three."

In our own day of blogger and citizen journalist, the "Fourth," to the extent it ever had a distinctive social/institutional identity, may be sinking back into the generality of the 3d. We can say "yippee!" or we can say "alas," since the two reactions are equally futile given the fact.