He invented contemporary political journalism, creating almost by himself a mass reading-public aware for the first time of its right to encounter controversial opinions and to participate in politics. Between his birth in 1737 and his death in 1809, enormous political upheavals turned the Western world upside down - and Paine was in the middle of the biggest ones. His writings put his life at risk in every country he lived in - in America for rebellion, in England for sedition, in France for his insistence on a merciful and democratic revolution. At the end of his life, he was shunned by the country he helped create, reviled as an infidel, forced to beg friends for money, denied the right to vote, refused burial in a Quaker cemetery. His grave was desecrated, his remains were stolen.
Nobody laughs and nobody cries.
Where he has gone or how he fares Nobody knows and nobody cares. Certainly that's true of the media. In this country, his memory has been tended by a few determined academics and historians and a stubborn little historical society in New Rochelle, New York, where he spent a good deal of his final, impoverished days. We've all been numbed by drowsy history-book pedagogy about founders, patriots, and dusty historical heroes. Because we owe Paine.