Truth, Varnished in So Many Ways

We have enjoyed the little dustup the past couple months over the award given by some group for the word "truthiness" as the word of the year. This word wasn't from what I can tell actually coined by Stephen Colbert (of Comedy Channel's "Colbert Report" - note the "t's" are silent), but he definitely provided the glitter by unearthing and featuring it prominently on his show. The actual entertainment came about because he was not even mentioned when the quasi-award was announced! Believe me, he got a bit of mileage out of that.

I won't get it precisely correct, but the working definition is along the lines of "what you would like to have be the case," although at least for me there is also a distinct flavor of the related concept of giving lip service and/or minimal attention to the actual facts while brazenly making case for your detached-from-reality position. Col-bear would no doubt bristle (that would be in character) at my extension, but at least I have properly offered attribution. Incidentally, if by some quirk of circumstances you have not seen the Colbert Report, it is programmed immediately after the Daily Show (Comedy Network), which I must then presume you have also not seen, since the former is a spinoff of the latter and the latter always acknowledges the former, and so on. There might be some fractal quality to this if one wanted to be analytical. You should at least periodically be checking in on both if you have any interest in politics - and if not, why are you here??

I offer that as backdrop. My topic here is a close relative of "truthiness." I've got three persona in mind here as I plunge in, frankly not knowing where this will go: G. Bush, ombudswoman Howell of the Washington Post, and Oprah. I've ordered those names in proportion to my expectation of making a connection between words and concepts based on "truth" and the person involved.

GW of course is notoriously loose with the truth. As an aside, my recent reading ("Prelude to Terror") noted that Oliver North was well-known for his habitual lying, often for no reason. It was apparently part of what you (or a biographer) might call his character. Junior of course gives off much the same stench. Why tell the truth when you might get away with lying? And then, mega-disturbingly, why bother with the truth (or, say, reality) when you have power?

But the bottom line with the unelect is that he seems to be unable to mouth the words "I was wrong," "sorry," "I made a mistake," or anything even vaguely equivalent. Despite everyone who is paying attention knowing that in fact he makes mistakes - Big Ones - with surprising regularity. He also of course lies, with regularity. Pathologically. What he doesn't do is admit error. I have no shingle for this, but it certainly seems to me that a person that could never admit error, were he not the president, would almost automatically by the time of having exhibiting this behavior for a decade or so be a candidate for some sort of serious therapy. Let's be honest here - he got the job because the Supreme Court ruled that he should live in that house regardless of the will of the voters.

Let's move on to Howell. Her Washington Post blog recently echoed right-wing nonsense to the effect that the Abramoff pay-to-play contributions to lawmakers, presumably to influence their decisionmaking (duhh), involved democrats as well as republicans. The right-wing line was wrong, as usual, she was stupid to make use of it, and when loudly called on it (thank goodness!), she and the paper went silent for days. Far too late she and the Post did an embarrassing self-smackdown, mouthing half of an acknowledgement, nothing resembling an apology, and basically a comical dance of defensiveness. I believe even a senior editor weighed in with over-the-top hysteria to the effect that much of the response had been profane and unprintable. Given the nature of the dialogue on the InterNet, what would we expect? You get out there, you have a chance of attracting profanity and flames. It doesn't sound like this was at all beyond the pale. The bottom line is that it appears Howell basically failed at her job of researching the issue, repeated propaganda, and then fell back on stalling and expecting her management to bail her out. Which, to the discredit of the paper they did. Try again, Post. Have you looked at those Abramoff donation lists yet?

And then there is Oprah. I don't want to dwell on this. She probably did, as she acknowledged, screw up in supporting author Frey ("Million Pieces"). I'm not really a fan, but I greatly admired her mega-pology. Of course she has an incredible marketing empire and credibility to defend. There was significant exposure there when she called in to the talk show and defended the author, and doubtless that was a consideration, but there was genuine remorse as well. That's something we have seen nothing of in the case of the fellow living in the white house these days. And there was only the faintest hint of remorse on the part of the Washington Post. The New York Times barely acknowledged that they allowed a white house propagandist (Miller) to collect a salary there while pretending to be a reporter. And of course the former "paper of record" also has yet to explain why they delayed publishing (1) the revelation that the government was spying on us without bothering with the legal details and (2) the evidence that bush was wearing a radio-pack during the presidential debates. Apparently both of these issues, obviously appropriately inviting questions about the president's actions, were well-documented in reports the Times had in hand before the 2004 presidential election.

In conclusion:

• Grade of D to Howell and the Post
• D- to Times (Miller fails class of course)
• The world knows that gw and his entire cabal are a failure

Saying It Like It Ain't

Honestly, I've never made it through an SOTU. In hindsight I flinch that it may be a sign of an incipient moral flaw. Naww! The whole idea is boring as all get-out. When the dude in power has been someone I could live with I didn't want to endure him mincing around up there doing a bad and grossly overextended version of an Emmy-award acceptance. And most of the time it's been scumbags like that dimwitted actor they found in an alley and sort of cleaned up and the passive-aggressive former CIA director who probably was accountable for our committing more actual terrorism on his watch than OBL will in his lifetime. (That's even allowing for GHB et al having lost focus so he is still in operation.) If you are into this sort of thing, Hollywood does a much better job of it. Frankly, though, those "reality" shows are right down there with the SOTU for me.

I was amused to find that Josh of Talking Points Memo has somewhat similar reservations about this particular speech:

I have a confession: I'm not sure when the last time was when I watched the State of the Union address. I think I may have watched it in 2003. But I'm not even certain of that. Perhaps a glance through the archives would show that I watched a bit of it last year, I don't know.

The truth is, I find it unwatchable.

Now, I read the transcript later. I'll often go back and watch key sections so I can get the flavor of a particular passage in the speech or of a debate it has spawned.

But the thing itself (watching the actual production in real time) and then the imbecile chatter afterwards -- I just can't deal. I just find it unbearable.

Are there others out there like me? I know that a great portion of the country never watches the thing and can't be bothered with politics in any case. But are there others out there who are genuine political junkies -- downright incurables -- and yet can't bear to watch this thing?

I'm with you, Josh. Along with my spouse and the lead secretary at work and probably in truth a mandate's worth of the minority of our populace that even is willing to countenance political dialogue these days.

My ferment is certainly not over. I have processed a good portion of the "prepared" Bush speech (hence sacrificing for presumed later enjoyment his notorious speechisms) and several responses. More perhaps to follow in later post. I will sign off here now though with a token annotated paragraph from GHB's text:

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No one can deny the success of freedom, but some men rage and fight against it [as in suppressing dissent by declaring that “you’re either for us or against us”?]. And one of the main sources of reaction and opposition is radical Islam - the perversion by a few of a noble faith into an ideology of terror and death [hmm – calling Pat Robertson]. Terrorists like bin Laden are serious about mass murder - and all of us must take their declared intentions seriously. They seek to impose a heartless system of totalitarian control throughout the Middle East, and arm themselves with weapons of mass murder [as compared to thousand-pound bombs dropped by US warplanes – not uncommonly poorly targeted and frequently killing far more civilians including children than any actual adversaries?]. Their aim is to seize power in Iraq, and use it as a safe haven [you’re telling me they thought of this before the Neo-cons did?] to launch attacks against America and the world [highly improbably of course without Bush's unjustified pig-headed provocative invasion and destruction of the Iraqi infrastructure]. Lacking the military strength to challenge us directly, the terrorists have chosen the weapon of fear [it’s unclear whether this is where the Bush administration picked up this tactic]. When they murder children at a school in Beslan ... or blow up commuters in London ... or behead a bound captive ... the terrorists hope these horrors will break our will, allowing the violent to inherit the Earth [brings to mind Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and “rendition”]. But they have miscalculated: We love our freedom, and we will fight to keep it [that’s a suicide-bomber’s credo if I ever heard one].

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Freedom's Unfortunate Linkage to Truth

Okay! - even the New York Times is starting to catch on. Too bad they are in the sorry compromised condition of fending off claims of being the primary bastion of the hallucinatory non-existent category of the"liberal press" (it has a sort of holy grail quality, that term, no?) while still obviously tarred by having naively played foster-parents to Ms. Miller while she was swooning girlishly over Mr. Chalabi.

It would be great fun to have access to a "West Wing"-like camera's-eye of the White House these days. The churlishness and scrambling, somewhat immiscible commodities as I see it, should make for some wonderful entertainment. As anyone who has learned to at least augment their tv/newspaper (i.e. corporate media, which is to say, rarely trustworthy news) input with a decent occasional swig of the Net must sense, the whole place has got to be like a pack of third-rate-crooks, with their lie-upon-lie Babel towers threatening to collapse at any moment. I picture overfilled bags of plunder continually being shunted from one closet to the next by folks who make Peter Sellers look like the Prince of Competence, photos, memos, and other incriminating evidence continually at risk of getting loose.

Frankly, I'm eager for straight-up calling the swine on their swine-ishness wherever I can find it. Just in case they aren't leaving the NYT on your doorstep these days, here's an enticing dollop, delightfully entitled "Spies, Lies and Wiretaps". Please traverse link to full editorial.

A bit over a week ago, President Bush and his men promised to provide the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the sort of warrantless spying on Americans that has been illegal for nearly 30 years. Instead, we got the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation, contemptuous dismissals of civil liberties concerns, cynical attempts to paint dissents as anti-American and pro-terrorist, and a couple of big, dangerous lies.

The first was that the domestic spying program is carefully aimed only at people who are actively working with Al Qaeda, when actually it has violated the rights of countless innocent Americans. And the second was that the Bush team could have prevented the 9/11 attacks if only they had thought of eavesdropping without a warrant.

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Sept. 11 could have been prevented. This is breathtakingly cynical. The nation's guardians did not miss the 9/11 plot because it takes a few hours to get a warrant to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail messages. They missed the plot because they were not looking. The same officials who now say 9/11 could have been prevented said at the time that no one could possibly have foreseen the attacks. We keep hoping that Mr. Bush will finally lay down the bloody banner of 9/11, but Karl Rove, who emerged from hiding recently to talk about domestic spying, made it clear that will not happen — because the White House thinks it can make Democrats look as though they do not want to defend America. "President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they're calling and why," he told Republican officials. "Some important Democrats clearly disagree."

Mr. Rove knows perfectly well that no Democrat has ever said any such thing — and that nothing prevented American intelligence from listening to a call from Al Qaeda to the United States, or a call from the United States to Al Qaeda, before Sept. 11, 2001, or since. The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act simply required the government to obey the Constitution in doing so. And FISA was amended after 9/11 to make the job much easier.

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Just trust us. Mr. Bush made himself the judge of the proper balance between national security and Americans' rights, between the law and presidential power. He wants Americans to accept, on faith, that he is doing it right. But even if the United States had a government based on the good character of elected officials rather than law, Mr. Bush would not have earned that kind of trust. The domestic spying program is part of a well-established pattern: when Mr. Bush doesn't like the rules, he just changes them, as he has done for the detention and treatment of prisoners and has threatened to do in other areas, like the confirmation of his judicial nominees. He has consistently shown a lack of regard for privacy, civil liberties and judicial due process in claiming his sweeping powers. The founders of our country created the system of checks and balances to avert just this sort of imperial arrogance.

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