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Jurek Martin: Truth and a state of incredibility
By Jurek Martin
Published: February 17 2006 18:30 | Last updated: February 17 2006 18:30
George Washington’s birthday falls next Wednesday and we all know he told his father he could not tell a lie. The first president is surely turning in his grave as he surveys the routine mendacity that characterises US public life today.
What particularly ticked me off was a recent congressional committee hearing. I caught it on the car radio and could not see if it was accompanied by slapping of thighs and sly winks. But senator after senator, from both parties, began their remarks by “thanking” the witness in front of them for his “leadership”.
The problem was that the witness was Michael “you’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie” Brown, the head of the federal emergency management agency who seemed more concerned with dining well in Baton Rouge and how he looked on television than in leading the campaign to help those drowned and displaced by hurricane Katrina.
It was almost as if Lieutenant William Calley was being thanked for his service to his country, as all military personnel routinely are nowadays, without recognising that he led the massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. The Katrina response was, and is, a domestic crime of negligence of equivalent magnitude.
Truth now appears to be relative. The best selling book in America last year, A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, was confected from tattered cloth. I do not particularly blame the author. He submitted it as a novel, which did not interest publishers, but then, reportedly on his agent’s advice, sent it back as a true memoir of redemption, which naturally enraptured them, Oprah Winfrey, and the book-buying public.
I used to think Bill Weld was a pretty good guy, for a Republican. A decent governor of Massachusetts who ran John Kerry close in the 1996 Senate race, he was vetoed by Jesse Helms for US ambassador to Mexico because he believed in gay rights, a badge of honour in my book. But now he is running for governor of New York his probity seems to have slipped a million little notches. His campaign website has been carrying real newspaper articles about him – but stripped of all their critical or negative content.
It is as if a theatre critic panned a play as “a fine mess”, only to see billboards quoting him saying it was “fine”. And that, unbelievably, was the blithe excuse offered by Weld’s staffers, none of whom seem to have paid a price for playing fast and loose with the truth. But why should they when members of congress have taken to removing any unfavorable reference from Wikipedia, the on-line database that can be edited by all and sundry. This practice means that Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, need never have admitted that he had not actually been drafted by a major league baseball team in his youth, which prompts dreams of a “fantasypedia”.
We used to expect truth from scientists until the pharmaceutical industry and politics came into it. Nasa is now reeling from revelations that a 24-year-old White House appointee, who, true to form, lied on his resume about possessing a university degree, had taken routinely to editing or muzzling whatever space agency scientists said or wrote about climate change if it deviated from the presidential line.
Worse, he ordered another senior boffin to insert phrases suggesting that the theory of evolution was just a theory and that intelligent design, religious creationism by another name, should be given equal weight – and this in the agency which is supposed to explore the universe. Beam me up, Scotty.
It stretches credulity to hear the president now extol the virtues of a scientific education when his administration has spent five years suborning science to its own political and religious ends.
This administration and truth are not easy bedfellows. It is hard to write that the national government, including the president, routinely lies but when Rummy and Cheney constantly exaggerate and dissemble about Iraq it is reasonable to conclude they have been reading James Frey and find truth elusive – or are economical with it on any given day.
The attorney general tells Congress that domestic wiretapping breaks no law but will not discuss particulars because they are “operational” and he cannot give aid and comfort to the enemy. The vice president, when not mistaking fellow hunters for quail, gives the impression that consulting Congress is a hanging offence because Al Qaeda populates the Democratic benches.
This fits with the overall defensive strategy of refusing to comment on anything which might involve legal proceedings (the CIA leak case etc) because of “ongoing investigations”. These, naturally, can last until eternity, or 2009, whichever comes first.
It baffles me why reporters turn up daily to hear a White House press secretary who knows nothing and says less, true or not. I think they should hiss, boo and generally behave badly, if only to lobby for another assignment.
This seems to be an administration bent on dismissing the reality of hard facts, of plain truth. I accept its definitions are different from mine but it might consider the other great man commemorated on Monday’s Presidents Day, Lincoln, born on February 12. He wasn’t called “Honest Abe” for nothing.
onohana@aol.com
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