Ted,
Re: "Mad Dan’s Noble Lie"
"On The O'Reilly Factor not so long ago, Dan Rather spoke in defense of
public figures who make stuff up. He called Bill Clinton an "honest man" even as
he acknowledged Clinton's whoppers. "Who among us have not lied about somebody?"
asked Rather. "I think at the core he's an honest person…I think you can be an honest
person and lie about any number of things."
You can be an honest person and lie about any number of things. This elastic
philosophy of honesty must account for Rather's view of himself as a witness
to "core truth" while peddling a forgery against the President. Rather sees a
"core truth" wrapped in a forgery inside his CBS reporting, and he is outraged
that his critics won't admit it. He is in effect saying: Didn't this forgery at
least place me in the vicinity of truth? He lashes out at "people who for
their own partisan, political agendas can't deny the core truth of this story
and want to change the subject and make the story about me rather than have
the story be about the unanswered questions about President Bush's military service."
The audacity here is surreal, though typical of the post-1960s ends-justify-the-means
moral arrogance Rather imbibed as a Watergate reporter. Presidents can't lie to
journalists, according to this ethos, but journalists can lie to presidents, and
even demand that presidents answer for the journalist's lies. Perhaps only
Dan Rather could get caught out in a forgery and proceed to demand that
President Bush answer the questions the forgery raises. According to Rather's
moral calculus, forged documents shed light not on his lack of credibility but on
the credibility of the president they slander.
In an interview with the New York Observer, Rather also uses the phrase
"fundamental truth." This is 1960s babble that amounts to saying: I, as a liberal,
can tell lies for the greater good; my surface dishonesty conveys a deeper truth.
Rather is falling back on the Noble Lie -- the idea that the enlightened are
entitled to heap fables upon the hoi polloi for the sake of preserving proper order.
The transcendent truth that mitigates Rather's faked-up memos is apparently
that Bush missed a physical examination over three decades ago -- not exactly
the justification for the Noble Lie Plato envisioned in The Republic. Why
allegations about a missed physical and truncated National Guard service trouble
Rather so deeply when Bill Clinton's draft-dodging did not is another question
Rather isn't likely to answer.
If the Noble Lie defense fails, what else can Rather try? The New York Observer
article suggests he will try the I'm-on-the-right-side-of-history defense:
"I think over the long haul, this will be consistent with our history and our
traditions and reputation…We took heat during the McCarthy time, during civil
rights, during Watergate. We haven't always been right, but our record is damn good." .
Rather sounds a bit like the habitual liar in Whit Stillman's movie Metropolitan
who, after getting called out for inventing a story about his archenemy abusing
a girl, says, "Okay, so that person wasn't real; she's a composite, like in
New York magazine." He then defends his lie on the grounds that it contained a
basic truth about his nemesis.
On Wednesday night, Rather relied on Jerry Killian's secretary Marion Knox
as his new document expert. Not because she defends the authenticity of his
memos -- she says they are bogus -- but because she subscribes to his "core truth"
rationalization: that the forgeries contain a kind of truth about Killian's view
of Bush. Knox's view is that the forged documents "accurately reflect Killian's
view of Lt. Bush," as CBS's correspondent put it. This use of Knox confirms that
Rather will eventually admit that he hoaxed the American people with forgeries
but will defend it as a happy hoax leading to the truth about the real liar -- George Bush,
whose unpardonable sin some 33 years ago was serving five more years in the
National Guard than Clinton ever did.
Perhaps Dan Rather's liberal defenders who now accept "core truth" fables owe
author Gary Aldrich an apology. Shouldn't they now say to him, "Your story about
Bill Clinton taking women to the D.C. Marriott, which predated the country's
introduction to Monica Lewinsky, wasn't technically true but it contained a basic
truth about Clinton. He was doing that sort of thing with women"? And shouldn't
they also apologize to Mark Fuhrman? "Sure, you may not have followed every
collection technique properly, but that's okay. O.J. was guilty," they should now say.
Perhaps Dan Rather, friend to the ACLU and Ann Richards (Rather attended a
1988 fundraiser for her, according to Liz Smith), could even advocate the
admission of forgery into courts of law as long as it kicks loose a deeper truth
about a guilty defendant.
What Rather said about Clinton he will soon revise for himself: you can now be
an honest journalist at CBS and lie about any number of things."
Make It So,
Yousef |
