By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
They say truth is stranger than fiction, but these days who can tell? Truth has always been philosophically elusive, but now ‘truthiness’ is not just commonplace, but the most obvious facts have become fictionalized. Need an example? Public Policy Polling found that 41 percent of Republicans thought that Benghazi was the worst political scandal in American history, far worse than Watergate, the Teapot Dome or Iran Contra (but Bush’s ignoring credible intelligence on the Twin Towers wasn’t a ‘thing,’ because, as his brother said, he kept us safe all that time). Need another example? Select almost any of the improbable things Ben Carson has said in the last month.
Now polling first among Pub candidates, Ben Carson is capitalizing on the public mistrust of the media by playing fast and loose with his personal history and trashing the ‘liberal media’ for going after the details. While I’m less than interested in who Dr. Ben threatened as a youth, his equivocating having already proven him vulnerable — or even today’s tidbit regarding a bogus offer to attend West Point — it should be clear that all questions are fair game. Media have not just the right but the duty to check the facts. Once upon a time, truth-seeking was the purpose of journalism. Liberty depended upon it.
So the question must cross our minds as we study Trump and Carson, the seemingly unshakable frontrunners of the Republican presidential race: how did this happen? How did we get here? This duo are not just political outsiders, they are bumbling neophytes to the process of governance, a domestic train wreck and international emergency waiting to happen, and in place thanks to decades of right-wing hostility to government and mistrust of press.
Once again, there are two political profiles at hand: the right vents their spleen on personalities, the left decries policy. Sanders and Warren epitomize the focus on the broken system that holds all politicos hostage to big money and influence peddlers, while the right demonizes individuals (the black guy, the white ex-FLOTUS) and is consistent in finger-pointing and buck-passing, hence the ridiculous dust-up over moderators in their last debate. The most enthusiastic response of the evening was the thunderous applause when Ted Cruz went after the media as handmaiden of the anti-Christ.
If the press did a better job of defining this situation, perhaps there would be some reality on why the right thinks government cannot be allowed to govern (besides its own party determined to prove it so), but as it is, every media outlet is suspected of political bias. Let’s make that reality bias, shall we? Even science is just one man’s opinion, no matter how well informed, according to those who inhabit the alternate reality that has provided us a parade of lawmakers ranging from anti-intellectual to just plain ignorant for the whole of this century. To say that this has left a sour taste in my mouth is an understatement.
So imagine my surprise and delight when I heard that Robert Redford and Cate Blanchett had finally made it through the hurdles of political correctness turned cynicism to release “Truth,” the biopic of Dan Rather and his 60 Minutes II producer, Mary Mapes, when they took on George W.’s AWOL scandal. That was just as Dubby was facing re-election to a second term, when, as you might recall, 60 Minutes used to be top notch, don’t-miss TV. Indeed, Mapes and Rather had previously broken the story of Abu Ghraib, putting Dubby’s entire administration in defensive posture and raising a shitstorm over the use of torture that has yet to be resolved.
This was a period when Dem candidate John Kerry was being successfully swift-boated, and any threat to the legitimacy of an incumbent Bush was viciously attacked, not to be tolerated. The Rathergate story, to review, detailed the absence of an extremely arrogant young George taking advantage of his Daddy’s connections to evade draft in Vietnam, and then failing to report for duty during flight training in the “Champagne Unit” of the Texas Air National Guard. The details, which had gotten short shrift from the press in the run up to the Bush win in 1999, had the potential to shake the election, which — history shows — was closer than most realized (and had Kerry protested the Ohio voting discrepancies, he would have put an end to Dubby’s tenure).
Rather and Mapes went after the facts with dogged determination, aware that the press had been so enamored of Dubya’s old boy demeanor and “compassionate conservatism” that they’d failed to follow up earlier. After years of Monica scandal, MSM seemed too relieved covering a “moral” candidate to go after shadows lingering from Dub’s misspent youth. But consummate journalists, the pair decided that proof that the man who had sent thousands of National Guardsmen off to fight his wars might well be a deserter was too important not to follow.
They had their work cut out for them. Anyone recalling that George H. W. Bush was in the Texas State House of Representatives at the time — eventually becoming CIA Director, Vice President and then POTUS — will understand how complicit supporters would be, decades later, to cover any tracks showing that young Georgie had received a free pass, but eventually some were found. And while the documents serving as proof seemed genuine — and likely were, we now know — they could not be verified, since so many who knew the real story refused to talk on record.
The tale went on the air. As producer, Mapes took credit for rushing the story before other verification could be found, but rushed or not, the White House (and Karl Rove) had anticipated the fall-out and had their people ready to raise hell over the allegations. Push-back on possible forgery began before the 60 Minutes episode was even over, and — although a question about a Selectric typewriter’s inability to produce the document within that time-frame is now discredited — the story, and those who told it, were cut off at the knees.
Mapes’s book, written in 2005, has been on the back-burner for a decade, waiting for someone with the fortitude to tackle it as a film. Although I have yet to see the movie, I can imagine that Redford and Blanchett are the perfect duo to execute a story that turned a respected newsman into a verb: “rathered,” to be pilloried for improper vetting of a topic.
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Cate is receiving raves for her performance, and Rolling Stone’s reviewer praised Redford for portraying Dan Rather’s “wounded dignity” as he issued a semi-apology for a lack of due diligence, followed by retirement, resulting in a public lack of trust in his ‘name brand.’
Rather, then, reminds me of Brian Williams before his fall from grace, now consigned to MSNBC instead of MSM Nightly News — in fact, the two have commonality of a sort, both giving off that well-spoken ‘every man’ vibe that the public appreciates. NBC, we should remember, has a history of this sort of thing.
Political Waves, back in those days, put out several posts a day, and I was deeply into this story when the hit squad made Dan Rather a verb. That was one of those moments, early in the century — much like the demise of Phil Donahue on MSNBC in the run-up to war, or its drubbing of (now CNN’s) Ashleigh Banfield for calling out FOX News as the ‘patriot police’ — that raised all my red flags.
Without a viable Fourth Estate, holding those who manipulate us responsible, whom can we turn to? How will we know that the job of president is NOT, as Trump envisions it, about cutting deals and making profit? How will we calculate the cost in secular liberty should a man like Ben Carson put his fundamentalist stamp on our domestic policy?
We got here, to this moment in history, by allowing people to corporatize news, make it entertainment. Much like privatized medicine, that’s always going to be a bad idea that culminates in (literal and/or figurative) dead bodies. In the days of Watergate, when the Washington Post’s Ben Bradlee backed his reporters in outing a corrupt presidential administration, he took a chance on losing money but flew with the angels, aware of his duty to the public to present them the truth. Even then he was a light in the darkness, with media consolidating all around him.
Of course, that is NOT what a privatized news corporation did in 2004 when it became apparent that Rather and Mapes were handling dynamite, capable of wounding a sitting president. Instead, they threw them on the scrap heap rather than buck power. And that’s what you’ll get from MSM today, although — and this is important to realize — the worst of the blackout of the last decade is over, thanks to the interwebs. We’re not so ill-informed any more, no longer so frightened or so invested in the squeaky-clean exceptionalism mythology that’s been shoved down our throats for decades.
We’ve seen too much, stubbed our toe on unnoticed truth, discovered decades of covert legislation that has left us without protections and, unfortunately, we still can’t rely on mainstream press to give us unbiased facts to help us determine our future. So we find ourselves in a Do-It-Yourself world, my dears, and only you can decide who, or what, is trustworthy. My take on that is if something touches a nerve, if it hurts to hear, there’s probably truth to it.
Today, for instance — after seven years of speculation and hesitation, and in advance of the Paris climate summit — the President scrapped the Keystone pipeline. It was a death from 10,000 cuts and a lingering one, at that. Hoping for better luck from a Pub president, the Canadian corporation that asked for the permit to be pulled is biding its time, but the global push is for alternative energy, and that’s increasingly difficult to challenge. Seems to me that if we can continue to build on the clean technology that is currently flourishing, such a proposition as filthy tar sands may well seem even more foolhardy in the future.
That is what I think, based on the growth of solar and wind capability, the systemic problems of discarding the remnants of coal and nuclear, the obvious and evident results of climate change happening all around us, but probably not the opinion of my neighbor who thinks Ted Cruz is the cat’s meow. She gets her news of the day from the pulpit, where Jesus is coming to change all that any minute now, so we don’t have to be concerned about coal ash or nuclear waste. That’s also Dr. Carson’s take on things, you should know, as well as a coming war between those who worship on Saturdays and the Satanic hordes that worship on Sundays. Or at least that’s the theology he favors, but don’t quote him because, well, West Point, yadda. But not to worry, it’s just media bias, all of it.
So, because we need to know what’s actually going on when we’re not looking, this was also the week that details of the TPP treaty were made available for public scrutiny. Here’s a read from Counterpunch telling us it’s worse than we thought, and another from In These Times which asserts that the Canadian Prime Minister, Mr. Trudeau, is under pressure to sign on, which might explain Obama’s comment today that although the new PM may be disappointed by his rejection of XL, they will surely be working together closely in the future. Canadians, bless them, may have something else in mind. Certainly the progressives do!
I will probably wait until “Truth” comes out on Netflix to watch it, and when I do I intend to rent “All The President’s Men” as well. Redford stars in both, and while time will surely tell on his face it will also be evident in the habitual responses and expectations we’ve assumed in regard to these true tales of journalistic heroism. Because truth IS stranger than fiction. Both of Redford’s roles represent men who have dealt with their fate in different ways: Rather to continue his journalism on digital media, while Bob Woodward has become, at best, an Establishment yes-man and consummate insider. You can hear Rather speak to the challenges of the journalistic process here.
The truth is out there, as Mulder used to say (and will again in January!) and, as was evident back in the glory days of X-Files, finding truth remains a Do-It-Yourself project for us all.
