The Patriot Post® · True Confessions: Secrets of the Order Revealed

I can’t deny it any longer. I did it and I’m glad. When the press caught on, I knew the game was up. I’ve just been waiting for the knock on the door that was sure to come. It’s been a terrible burden, keeping the secret all these years. Now I’m filled only with relief. At long last my nightmare is over. I’ll tell you everything you want to know. I give up, copper….

At this point Gentle Reader may supply his own favorite cliche from any 1930s gangster movie or old “True Confessions” magazine. But be sure to give it a slight twist – so it’s not immediately recognizable as purple prose. Call it lavender prose.

That was the object of our little conspiracy: to sneak a single, wince-making phrase into our copy as a not-so-private joke. The trick was to do it with a certain subtlety. For a time there was a whole, informal conspiracy of us inky wretches playing this game.

We called ourselves the Order of the Occult Hand in honor of the phrase that would tip off those aware of it: “It was as if an occult hand …” Manage to get those words into the paper and you became a member of the Order. We weren’t supposed to noise it about and spoil the joke, but eventually word got out. Of course. Newspapermen can’t keep a secret; our trade is exposing secrets.

It all came back to me on hearing of the death of Reese Cleghorn, whom I always considered the originator of the Order, though he himself denied it to his dying day, which came Monday, March 16.

When someone like Reese Cleghorn goes, the same thought always occurs: We’ve lost the last gentleman. At 78, he had the standard wall full of plaques, a journalistic career of some prominence in assorted locales behind him, and he’d restored one of the most neglected J-schools in the country – the University of Maryland’s – to its rightful place near the head of the pack. The school had lost its accreditation by the time he became dean, and he proceeded to bring it back to life and honor.

But beyond all that, Reese Cleghorn had done the impossible. He had remained both a newspaperman and a gentleman. That’s quite a feat even for a Southerner.

It wasn’t what he’d done in life that was most impressive about Reese but what he was. On seeing his obituary, it was hard not to think of Cavafy’s poem: “Honor to those who in the life they lead/ define and guard a Thermopylae … generous when they are rich, and when they’re poor,/ still generous in small ways,/ still helping as much as they can; always speaking the truth,/ yet without hating those who lie.”

He was a man of strong convictions, Reese Cleghorn was, but even more striking was his charity toward those who didn’t share them. They say that after 40 a man has created his own face, and Reese’s, like his character, was chiseled, fine, elegant. If his manner was open, it was also proper. He was not the type to take liberties.

What some of us will remember most about him was his playfulness – always well moderated but constant. In his itinerant career, he would go from personable young editorial writer fighting for the Good and Just at the old Charlotte Observer to Grand Old Man of American journalism. But the twinkle in his eye never left him. Founding an Order of the Occult Hand would have been just like him. Though he pleaded innocent, he was definitely a senior member in genteel standing.

How did the Order get started, and why? Maybe you’d have to be a bored young reporter required to write countless, routine fill-in-the-blank news stories to understand. Soon you find yourself looking for awkward phrases to sneak into the newspaper just to pass the time of night. And before you know it, you start throwing a favorite of your own into stories to see if it’ll make it past some drowsy copy editor. There’s a real if secret sense of satisfaction when it does. It’s a harmless enough diversion. And less serious an infraction than trying to slip In Cognito into the box scores.

Alas, the game couldn’t go on forever. It was a lot easier to keep the Order of the Occult Hand a secret before Google. These days, all someone with an eye for bad prose need do is type in the suspect phrase and, bingo, he’s got a list of all of us co-conspirators who’ve managed to get the Occult Hand into our copy over the years. But once the game had been exposed by some nosy reporter for the Chicago Tribune, duly followed up by NPR’s journalism critic, there wasn’t much point in continuing it.

Let’s face it, some applicants for the Order really should have been turned down; they were a disgrace to the fraternity. Like those who used the secret phrase so artlessly that it stood out and gave the game away. (“It was as if an occult hand had peppered federal programs with unfunded mandates….”) The object isn’t just to use awkward language but to do so subtly. The clumsy types were asking to be caught – like American spies in World War II movies who don’t use their cutlery in the European fashion.

I missed the game so much that, once the conspiracy has been exposed, I decided to pick a new phrase and put the Order of the Occult Hand on a more formal basis – with a membership list and all. I didn’t bother with a secret password and ceremonial robes, but I did appoint myself Grand Poobah and Self-Appointed Beneficent Dictator, which simplifies decision-making considerably. So now we have another telltale phrase – and it shouldn’t be easy to spot these days, considering all the other lavender prose about. Those of us who’ve already used it really ought to have a convention. Just to drink a toast to the memory of Reese Cleghorn.

© 2008 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.