Who established the concept of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable?

Finley Peter Dunne (7/10/1867 – 4/24/1936) was a writer, humorist, and muckraking journalist in his hometown, Chicago. He gained national prominence through sketches based on a fictional character, “Martin J. Dooley”, who once said, "Th newspaper does ivrything f'r us. It runs th' polis foorce an' th' banks, commands th' milishy, controls th' ligislachure, baptizes th' young, marries th' foolish, comforts th' afflicted, afflicts th' comfortable, buries th' dead an' roasts thim aftherward".

Born to Irish-immigrant parents, Mr. Dunne sketched the character as an immigrant from Ireland’s County Roscommon who owned and ran an Irish pub on the South Side of Chicago. Mr. Dooley typically spoke—in a thick Irish brogue—openly and frankly about social and political issues. He wrote the Dooley sketches between 10/7/1893 and 7/3/1926 and selected a published a collection of them as “Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War” in 1889.

With just a high-school education, Mr. Dunne virtually established the template for sports writing, rose through the journalistic ranks to editorship, married an accomplished book editor, and became a member of Chicago’s high society. Although he was a frequent target of Mr. Dunne’s sly, humorous, and politically accurate “attacks”, President Theodore Roosevelt became a Dunne fan and used the popular Dooley sketches to gauge public opinion; they were read at White House cabinet meetings. Roosevelt invited Dunne to the White house and the two became friends.