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FRIDAY, MARCH 25, 2011

Kevin and Krugman fight on: “We live in a fictitious world.”

Michael Moore said it eight years ago. Isn’t it time to revisit this statement? To help the public understand what it means? To use that statement to build a new “paradigm”—a new way of viewing our politics?

How fictitious is our world? For starters, consider this seminal post by Kevin Drum. (Headline: “The New Media Rules.”) Kevin notes a major breakdown in our society’s intellectual practice, especially when major Republicans engage in fairly ridiculous flip-flops:

DRUM (3/23/11): Back in the day, I remember a lot of people saying that it was getting harder for politicians to shade their positions—either over time or for different audiences—because everything was now on video and the internet made it so easy to catch inconsistencies. But that's turned out not to really be true. Unless you're in the middle of a high-profile political campaign, it turns out you just need to be really brazen about your flip-flops. Sure, sites like ThinkProgress or Politifact with catch you, and the first few times that happens maybe you're a little worried about what's going to happen. But then it dawns on you: nothing is going to happen. Your base doesn't read ThinkProgress. The media doesn't really care and is happy to accept whatever obvious nonsense you offer up in explanation. The morning chat shows will continue to book you. It just doesn't matter.
And that's got to be pretty damn liberating. You can literally say anything you want! And no one cares! That's quite a discovery.

That’s true—it’s quite a discovery. But this peculiar state of affairs has begun to obtain in the “liberal” world too. Some liberals can’t conceive of the notion that Rachel Maddow may tell them things that aren’t true, even as she swears to them that she always corrects her own mistakes. “You can literally say anything you want?” Increasingly, “no one cares” about that in our tribe either! And Kevin is right: The fact that powerful players can behave this way really is quite a discovery.

Increasingly, tribal fictitions rule. In effect, Paul Krugman writes about one form of this problem in today’s column—and then too, there was Caroline Heldman on last night’s Hannity.

Heldman is one of the three million youngish blonde women employed to comment on Fox. She is always introduced as “an associate professor of political science at Occidental Courage,” which we tend to find a bit strange since Occidental is in L.A. and Heldman always seems to be live and direct in Hannity’s New York studio. (For a capsule bio, click here.) Heldman sits in the liberal chair on Hannity’s three-member panels. In fact, she does tend to advance progressive positions, sometimes in ways which make such positions seem a bit over the top.

But alas! Last night, it came time to discuss Donald Trump’s deep concern about Obama’s strange birth. Heldman battled with Hannity and two Republican stooges—and she was remarkably clueless, hopelessly unprepared:

HELDMAN (3/24/11): I think we are asking for the birth certificate because we have a black man in the White House. The idea that he's not a citizen is ludicrous.
HANNITY: This has happened before! It was Harrison's vice president, it became an issue whether he or not he was born in Canada and whether or not he had come from Ireland and people wanted to see the birth certificate.
MCGUIRK: John McCain too.
HANNITY: John McCain, hang on, that's another issue.
HELDMAN: No, let's look at John McCain. There wasn't a big push during the campaign on McCain's certificate.
HANNITY: They thought he was born in Panama.
HELDMAN: Indeed, but why not have equal attention paid to those two? Much more attention was paid to Obama and it is absolutely ludicrous for mainstream media to be supporting this.
EHRLICH: I don't like the issue either, but why not put it to bed? [Presumably, by presenting the birth certificate.]
HELDMAN: Because it is insulting and it's racist!
MCGUIRK: It's racist!
HELDMAN: Because we wouldn't be asking a white president for his birth certificate!
HANNITY: They asked John McCain in the last presidential cycle.
HELDMAN: Who? Did he have an entire group—
HANNITY: I have a story on NBC where they were saying, they were raising the whole question, was he born in America?
HELDMAN: There was a response to that question—
HANNITY: Doesn't the constitution talk about naturalized citizens, 35 years of age?
HELDMAN: But, you know, there's no way that there's collusion between a paper in Honolulu—
HANNITY: If I asked for the birth certificate, can I get it?
HELDMAN: I assume that you could, Sean.

Good God. On what planet do these professors live? In this hapless exchange, three million Fox viewers saw a progressive professor offer standard complaints about how racist this whole thing is. Here’s what they didn’t see her say: They didn’t see her say that Obama has already presented his birth certificate—that the document has been vouched for by Hawaii’s Republican governor!

Heldman was just as unprepared as Behar, Goldberg and Walters before her. Over the past two nights, in fact, a Fox viewer may have seen tape of all four women without ever seeing anyone note the most obvious factual point. Should we really be surprised if such viewers come away thinking that Obama really has withheld his birth certificate?

In this way, fictitions spread. Your culture turns into a madhouse.

We had planned to write a bit more about liberals and race this week, working off this earlier post by Drum. We’ll postpone till early next week. But please note: For Heldman, it was so easy to squawk about race that she passed over the bone-simple, basic factual point: Obama has shown his birth certificate! Hannity doesn’t have to “ask”—and Heldman doesn’t have to “assume.”

Our culture is spiraling into tribal insanity—and our tribe now plays a role in this process, where once the nonsense all came from the right or from the “mainstream” press. (Al Gore said he inspired Love Story! It came from Rich and Dowd.) Next week, let’s go “south toward home,” as many African-Americans have apparently done (click here). Let’s go to Mississippi again. Let’s talk about Haley Barbour!

Final point: In today’s column, David Brooks marvels at the way Qaddafi controls the minds of Libyans, turning Libya into “the most censored country in the Middle East and North Africa.” And we agree—it sounds pretty crazy as we read that column.

But the way our discussion is now getting “censored” is pretty amazing too. In many parts of our public discussion, it’s almost impossible to hear accurate facts. Every factual claim is false—and it’s very hard to find corrections.

In the end, just how different is that from the Libyan lunacy? Brooks describes a crazy world. We’d suggest he stay closer to home.