Roi Soleil

I wish I could remember the source. I don’t. Nevertheless I well remember reading in the early 1960s something to this effect. “Any man observed to have been in conversation with Louis XIV for at least fifteen minutes, could turn that event into enduring personal wealth.” Back then—I mean in the 1960s—the media had certainly already emerged. It hadn’t as yet turned into the modern version of the court of Louis XIV. The media’s power, to be sure, is not quite so concentrated as that of the Sun King, but these days it sheds the same sort of sunlight once shed by Louis Quatorze.  My author had not elaborated—assuming that his readers were sophisticated. The statement puzzled me at first until, by simple reasoning, I saw how that could indeed be true. People seek those who’re close to the source of power; being sought-after gives them opportunities; furthermore the mere appearance of being connected will suffice; the person need have no genuine power. It’s all reflection, as it were, like that of sunlight. Today’s Roi Soleil is actually the media. Therefore, de facto, we already live under a monarchy. We just haven’t realized it yet.