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--- Begin Message --- Title: Bad Faith -Caveat Lector-November 8, 2003
http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/03/11/08_bad.html
Bad Faith
By Pamela Troy
"...Karen Hughes accused me of lying. And so I called Karen and asked her why she was saying this, and she had this almost Orwellian rap that she laid on me about how things she'd heard -- that I watched her hear -- she in fact had never heard, and she'd never heard Bush use profanity ever. It was insane...the way she lied was she knew I knew she was lying, and she did it anyway. There is no word in English that captures that. It almost crosses over from bravado into mental illness...." —Tucker Carlson, Salon interview, September 13, 2003
So many varieties of deceit have been offered by the Bush Administration and its apologists for the past three years that the alert reader and listener can't help but become something of a connoisseur of lies. There's the "Oopsie" that the Bush administration has made so completely its own, which involves lying, then later claiming that the lie was a "mistake" and blaming someone else for it. There's the operatic Limbaugh/Coulter approach of shrieking an unfounded accusation like "liberals are all traitors" and then refusing to explain or defend it, the Bill O'Reilly "Shut Up!" variation, which includes drowning out the opposing view by turning off their mikes, the Bush White House "That's-My-Story-and-I'm-Sticking-To-It," gambit, which consists of dogged repetition, and so many, many more, some oblique, some direct, some complex, and some with sledge-hammer, intelligence-smashing simplicity.
And then there's the gorgeous but not uncommon breed that regularly bursts into bloom on CNN's "Crossfire." A dandy specimen appeared last Tuesday in response to Paul Begala bringing up the Bush administration's penchant for back editing documents and suppressing information that might bolster arguments in opposition to Bush policies:
"When President Bush played dress-up on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, the White House Web site declared -- quote ? 'President Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended' -- unquote. Of course, later, that was changed to 'major combat operations have ended.' In a similar vein, 'Education Week' has reported that the Department of Education is stripping from its Web site thousands of files that dispute or contradict the Bush administration's political stance on education issues. And now, according to 'The Progress Report,' which is a new daily update from the Center For American Progress -- I've already found this update to be indispensable -- the Bush White House is altering its Web site so that certain Internet engines like Google cannot be used to archive White House content on Iraq."
Tucker Carlson, good conservative that he is, denounced the Center for American Progress for "wasting their time playing around with Google. That's pathetic. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard," then chuckled when Begala observed that "This president is hiding information from us every day. He's doctoring web sites."
"Doctoring Web sites!" Carlson chortled. "If I see any evidence of that, I'll be the first to denounce it."
Aside from the Escher Print absurdity of Tucker Carlson promising to be the first to denounce the Bush administration for suppressing online information after Paul Begala and the Center for American Progress have done so, this exchange was striking because of Carlson's elaborately mimed amusement and disbelief. Those who spend time online will recognize Carlson's reaction as a version of what I've come to call the "ROFL," the first part of a two-step commonly danced by right-wingers when faced by some especially egregious action on the part of the Bush administration.
You begin by ridiculing as paranoid and ridiculous the very notion that a policy is in place (often the letters "R.O.F.L." meaning "Rolling On The Floor Laughing" are posted early on as a sort of flag) then, after a short time has passed, you shift smoothly into ridiculing denunciations of the policy as ridiculous. Thus, the unpleasant moment when you have to actually say, for instance, "The government should be able to pick up American citizens and hold them in secret without lawyers or hearings" is avoided by simply jumping from pretended disbelief into justifying it as a fait accompli. Carlson's variation allows him to support a lie without actually enunciating the words, "The White House web site never declared that combat operations in Iraq were ended."
It's not surprising that an aficionado of this approach would be revolted by the cave-woman tactics of Karen Hughes described in the excerpt that begins this piece. For one thing, Hughes committed the blunder of direct denial. Perhaps if she'd responded by laughing "Oh yeah, riiiiiiight. Bush uses profanity, I am sooooo sure!" or just described Carlson as "wasting his time counting cuss-words. That's pathetic!" he wouldn't have been so angry. Few things can annoy a believer more than clumsy tactics used by someone on the same side. Then there's the sheer vulgarity of the fact that Hughes obviously "knew I [Tucker Carlson] knew she was lying, and she did it anyway." Sophisticated liars know the importance of a dab of self-deception, of offering themselves a superficial mental alibi that makes it easier to project a veneer of sincerity. When the words in the forefront of your mind are "gotta lie" instead of "Oh those wacky liberals!" it usually shows.
The version of bad faith that Carlson personifies on CNN is one that has become increasingly common among those who like to portray themselves as "reasonable conservatives." Typically they adopt the persona of the good-natured opposition, responding to damning facts by chuckling, sometimes even patting their opponents on the shoulder and offering supposedly friendly advice about the danger of losing credibility with "crazy" accusations of doctored web sites or fudged intelligence. What else can they do, after all, but stall until the moment comes when they can shift into directly touting the numerous and blatant deceptions of the Bush administration as truth?
Many liberals and moderates have a soft spot for Tucker Carlson because they can remember his unflattering 1999 piece about George W. Bush in TALK magazine, the one that prompted Karen Hughes' denial. Others may shrug it off as no big deal that Carlson and others like him refuse to acknowledge the Bush administration's consistent policy of suppressing or altering information. When Coulter, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, et al are raging, it's easy to find more well-modulated accents soothing, even reassuring.
But consider this; In the bad old days of the U.S.S.R., few things aroused more derision in the west than the phenomenon of the "vanishing commissar," that being the Soviet habit of rewriting textbooks and encyclopedias and airbrushing old photographs to conform with a version of history that omitted facts that might cause a Soviet citizen to question the consistency, judgement and/or good will of Soviet leaders.
Absurd as this practice was, it made sense. Lies, after all, are the life's-blood of modern tyranny, and both a knowledge and acknowledgement of history can serve as an inoculation against deceit. It's interesting to note that the changes made to Soviet texts and photos often involved events that had occurred within living memory and so were unlikely to fool many informed adults. Soviet leaders were not just attacking ancient history, not merely trying to convince Soviet citizens to believe things that were false. They were attacking memory. They were attempting to stamp out written or photographed evidence of what they, and thousands of Soviet citizens knew to be true, and hoping that in that way, as time went on and new generations were born, the truth would eventually be lost.
Suppressing previously available documentation and altering published texts after the fact goes beyond the normal drive of a government to massage or slant information. It's an attempt to ensure that contemporary citizens are too bereft of reliable sources to assess a government effectively, and that future citizens will be too ignorant to do so. Nobody who values democracy would countenance it.
And the chances are, Tucker Carlson is too knowledgeable about history, (and in particular, as a conservative, the history of the U.S.S.R.) to honestly dismiss concerns about this practice as unrealistic or "pathetic." His bad faith may be less blatant than that of Karen Hughes, but it's an even deeper dishonesty. The lie embedded in Carlson's derisive response to Paul Begala's point about the suppression of online information by the Bush White house is that Carlson and other conservatives would care if they knew Begala's accusation to be true. It's a lie he compounds by promising, "If I see any evidence of that, I'll be the first to denounce it."
There is a remote possibility that Carlson is as indestructibly naive as his baby-duck good looks imply. It's been more than a week now since he made that promise, plenty of time for him to look into the matter and so far no denunciations from him are evident. But perhaps in a few weeks we'll hear an embarrassed admission from him that the Bush administration has, indeed been "doctoring websites," and an actual denunciation of the practice from him.
Or maybe, sometime in the future, someone will bring up the old White House headline that "combat operations in Iraq have ended," or dispute President Bush's stance on educational issues, or bring up a contradiction between a past statement by the White House on Iraq and a current statement. Carlson will offer that boyish smile of his, cock his head and say, his eyes twinkling with amused satisfaction, something to the effect of "That's not what the records tell us. Got any documentation to back your claim up?"
Which do you think is more likely?
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Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. www.ctrl.org DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at:
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