Trollfighting Mark Twain: Viral Media and the Funston Feud

Abstract:Fred Funston, an alleged hero of the Philippine-American War, was enjoying a fleeting celebrity, including rumors of becoming President Theodore Roosevelt's running mate. Using only a satiric essay in the North American Review, "A Defense of General Funston," and a letter to the editor of the Denver Post, near where Funston was then stationed, Mark Twain generated a controversy that lasted for months, was covered by many newspapers throughout the continental United States, and succeeded in destroying Funston's reputation. This relatively minor episode in Twain's life reveals not only how he was able to leverage his celebrity and manipulate the US mass media during the final decade of his life, but also how the mass media environment, which had continually expanded and diversified over the course of the nineteenth century, had become a site of cultural power.