Letters to the Editor
William Timberman
Published Letters: 3298 Editor's Choice: 7
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Perhaps
[Read the article: The unresolved story of ABC News' false Saddam-anthrax reports]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For we are living in an age when mundane lies flow past us in a steady, undifferentiated stream, like the commuters in the subway station, and if a sparkling ray of truth shines forth--and it's not immediately overwhelmed with character assasination--it will simply be utterly and routinely ignored. -- Paul Rosenberg
In the mid-eighties, I had occasion to spend several weeks in Manhattan. It seemed to me that there were as many Julliard students fiddling in the subway in those days as there were break dancers in Washington Square. A very high level of musicianship, too, but I was able to appreciate it only in passing -- places to go, and people to see, etc.
How many Grecian urns do you have to encounter before you're prepared to write Ode on a Grecian Urn? Sometimes only one; in fact, I suspect that seeing only one is better for the emotion-recollected-in-tranquility impulse than debarking from a tour bus and being herded past dozens by a bullhorn-brandishing tour guide.
Context is everything, and the creation of context is a lifelong endeavor. Even so, such moments are both rare and fleeting. Unfortunate, perhaps, but true nevertheless.
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A gentle anger
[Read the article: A light bulb goes off on the Washington Post editorial page]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yes, that's it exactly. You might even call it the soul of virtue when dealing with lies. If we won't defend reality as we perceive it, what will we defend?
As for the liars themselves, particularly those in positions of great influence, I doubt much can be done. As has often been pointed out here, they're already so compromised that divesting themselves of the habit of lying would be a threat not only to their livelihoods, but to their very identities, at least as they themselves perceive them.
Gary Kamiya's current article, here in Salon, is both concise and devastating about the reasons that our media stars have become such a sorry constellation of fools and liars, but he is also gentle; much gentler than I can be, given the damage they've done.
Not listening to them is comforting, but it's not enough. Every lie has to be contested, every half-truth, or suspect conclusion has to be publicly evaluated. Glenn does this very well, and we all benefit from his labors in our own dealings with others.
This past Saturday, I was one of the participants in a peace march in my town which was angrily confronted by a woman who'd just lost her son in Iraq, and blamed us. It was a difficult moment, one of those awful misunderstandings where a hug wasn't permittted, and words simply wouldn't do to bridge the gulf between us.
We played as it lay, and so did she. I wouldn't call what happened cathartic, but it was very real. I hate to think that this sort of thing, repeated over and over, will be what it will take to loosen the bloviators grip on our national conversation, but my experience in the Viet Nam era suggests that there really is no other way. It's our duty in such moments to be gentle, but it's also our duty to be persistent.
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Oh, boy....
[Read the article: A light bulb goes off on the Washington Post editorial page]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I do hope you're wrong, Paul, but given how rarely you seem to be wrong about such things, I wouldn't bet against you. I do agree that Nixon's reach considerably exceeded his grasp, at least the available evidence seems to indicate as much. Even though I doubt that Bush can match Nixon's cunning, Nixon's historical role as precursor and prophet -- as John the Baptist to Bush's Christ, if you will -- has certainly made the way forward much smoother for the bastards of the present. GWB's own limitations are real enough, but when all is said and done, he does have Cheney to do whatever dirty work needs doing.
I'll admit that the logic of our recent history points to the end which you foresee, but from where I stand, putting the final pieces of the puzzle in place is likely to be a much more complex and difficult task than we fear, or that the present incumbents hope.
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Or Panama, or Grenada, or Iraq
[Read the article: Do national journalists agree with Gary Kamiya?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But not, of course, North Korea, Russia or China. There are reasons why regime change at the point of our guns in these benighted countries isn't such a fine idea.
We, of course, lack access to the intelligence which could tell us what those reasons might be, and lack the intellectual resources even to hazard a guess without the assistance of our national journalists.