Last Friday, we had what must have been the biggest, most mirthful Rakish party yet. Sad to say, the Big Boss was dreadfully sick, which is a shame, because no one hosts a party like the Big Boss. Still, just about anyone and everyone who is responsible for putting together The Rake was there, in fine form. High point of the evening was a game of doubles on the billiards table. Shooters were quizzed on a capricious list of great titles from literature. It was not required to know who wrote, for example, The Stranger, in order to take your shot. An incorrect or incomplete answer was just as acceptable as a correct one, and anyone in the gallery could offer an answer. It was rather like cognitive bumper-pool—brainteasers as distractions and obstacles. For some reason, we were stuck on science fiction authors and existentialist authors—perhaps because we thought these would be easiest. Perhaps because the mental horizons had been considerably contracted by a lot of really, really good wine. Anyway, we managed to stump Hugh Bennewitz with a reversal. What was Alexis de Tocvqueville’s most famous book? Bennewitz demurred, and we answered— incorrectly, or at least incompletely, “America.” In all fairness, this should go down in the minutes as a demerit to the question-asker. The title of De Toqueville’s most famous work is, of course, “Democracy in America.” We are sorry. But we know what we meant.
It is often the spirit of the thing that counts. This morning, we read James Woolcott’s takedown of the insufferable Charles Krauthammer, and we couldn’t agree more. A well-established truism: One of the underpinnings of the red wave has been the echo chamber of right-wing bloggers, radio, and TV, who simply will not let go of certain arguments and certain incidents, no matter how specious or wrong they are. It’s like Chinese water torture with these people.
We find it especially interesting that in all the kerfuffle about “Rathergate” (egad, we thought the -gate suffix had finally been staked through the heart, along with -stock, but we live in regressive times— hello, again, Gilded Age! Goodbye, New Deal!), no one has ever argued the facts, only the documentation. This is a happy situation for the right, which has strangely become the party of moral relativism. These days, no one argues more loudly than a conservative that the message is indistinguishable from the messenger, that it is impossible to have a truly objective journalism, and therefore we must wallow in a constant jet-stream of gas and bile.
Anyway, the whole point of “Rathergate” has, from the right’s point of view, become a smoking gun on the liberal bias of the media. Of course, no amount of painful soul-searching, and no mea culpa at any volume will satisfy these people. Because once we move beyond that perfect storm of speculation and conspiracy theory, we are left with what we are always left with—the plain old boring facts. Why is it more improtant that Dan Rather got duped by forgeries than that our president went AWOL? Why did the Swift Boat vets continue to have an impact on the national consciousness after their claims had been eviscerated by serious journalists? Why have the stories that independently confirmed the essential claims and spirit of the news report that became Rathergate been pushed aside? Why does no one care when the present administration actually pays a reporter to produce news that is favorable to his benefactor? Why have we been acting as if Vietnam never happened? Because this is what the right-leaning media does best—strike up the band, especially the trombone section, whenever there is partisan skirmish to be won, and especially when there are inconvenient facts to be obscured. Which is at all times and in all places.
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