{"id":393,"date":"2003-07-13T08:17:44","date_gmt":"2003-07-13T13:17:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alevin.com\/?p=393"},"modified":"2003-07-13T08:17:44","modified_gmt":"2003-07-13T13:17:44","slug":"ben-franklins-pseudonyms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/?p=393","title":{"rendered":"Ben Franklin’s pseudonyms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, I read The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin<\/a>.
\nGiven recent discussions about identity and anonymity on the internet, it was Franklin’s often wrote social and political commentary under pseudonyms.
\nHe began writing under assumed names as a teenager, when he wrote letters to the editor in the guise of an older woman. Richard Sauders, the nominal author of Poor Richard’s Almanac, was a pseudonym.
\nThat sort of pseudonymity would be harder to pull off today. It caused an uproar when a novel about Bill Clinton’s political campaign was published by an author who was obviously a campaign insider. Some of Franklin’s pseudonymous writing would be considered unethical hoaxes by today’s standard.
\nFranklin was a businessman, then a politician and diplomat. It was unwise to insult customers and political allies under his own name. He used pseudonyms to write words sharper than he was willing to sign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, I read The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin. Given recent discussions about identity and anonymity on the internet, it was Franklin’s often wrote social and political commentary under pseudonyms. He began writing under assumed names as a teenager, when he wrote letters to the editor in the guise of … Continue reading “Ben Franklin’s pseudonyms”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prDRq-6l","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}