The Dirtiest Job in Lakewood: "Muckraking" the Manure

[Brian Essi]

There is a lot of manure in Lakewood---and the City "Leaders" are spreading most of it in nearly every home and on every street in the city.

It's a dirty job to clean up after them, but somebody has to do it.

A History Lesson from 110 years ago:

Merriam-Webster:

Did You Know?

"The noun "muckrake" (literally, a rake for "muck," i.e., manure) rose out of the dung heap and into the realm of literary metaphor in 1684. That's when John Bunyan used it in Pilgrim's Progress to represent man's preoccupation with earthly things. "The Man with the Muckrake," he wrote, "could look no way but downward." In a 1906 speech, Teddy Roosevelt recalled Bunyan's words while railing against journalists he thought focused too much on exposing corruption in business and government. Roosevelt called them "the men with the muck-rakes" and implied that they needed to learn "when to stop raking the muck, and to look upward." Investigative reporters weren't insulted; they adopted the term "muckraker" as a badge of honor. And soon English speakers were using the verb "muckrake" for the practice of exposing misconduct."