Tales Of Our Times
By JOHN BARTLIT
Los Alamos
No Mammoth Brand Routinely Provides The Whole Truth
Political parties fib to their fans; other fibs start among fans. Fibs do not equate to lies. Fibs simply encourage misunderstanding by omitting key facts. In this same way, commercial ads reliably skip facts that brand owners hope will be forgotten. Currently, fans of either team have fibs going around about “due process”.
Some portion of Trump fans worries that their team could be bypassing due process in some actions taken. Trump foes use protests and the media to mount endless claims that Trump has broken law after law. Some Trump foes worry that their team thus could also be bypassing due process. Mightn’t the same legal right to due process owed to some immigrants or bureau staff also be owed to Trump? Ultimately, courts of law must decide who is guilty of what abuse(s) of due process. The verdict requires more rigor than marketing-style news-opinions.
Nowadays the two teams tell separate stories on separate wavelengths, whether private or public. Everyone knows where to turn to hear from the team that is a paragon of free speech and honesty. And where to hear about the team that destroys free speech and honesty. Like commercial-grade ads, these “news” versions skip major details—which prompts me to run an experiment in language.
My op-ed today is a “hybrid” column. Below, it tells a news story from the GOP side. Then it tells a different news story from the “liberal” side. Both cases are real stories. Such a column is by no means a bipartisan column. It is a simple, rogue display of current mind-sets put into a single column.
I invite one and all to weigh, as each prefers, how free speech is used or misused in our democracy. Now, on to the experiment.
Read again where the GOP got a big black mark. Dominion Voting Systems Corp., with headquarters in Toronto and Denver, is the second largest source of voting machines in the U.S. In 2016, Dominion machines served 70 million U.S. voters. Came the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden. Fox News channel caught the bad habit of blaming Dominion, asserting their machines were rigged to shift votes from Trump to Biden. Fast-forward to March 2021: Dominion filed a lawsuit for $1.6 billion in libel damages vs. Fox. The trial was set to hear opening statements on April 18, 2023. On that date, Fox agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million in damages to avoid trying the case. Dominion held many emails from Fox bearing strong evidence that Fox knew the stories they had reported were bogus opinions, aka “fake news”.
Move on and read again where Democrats got a big black mark. George Clooney is an actor, director, writer, and longtime supporter of liberal causes. On July 10, 2024, Clooney wrote a piece in the New York Times entitled, “I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee.” After praising Biden’s lengthy career, Clooney went on to explain, “I saw Biden three weeks ago at my fundraiser for him. It’s devastating to say it, but he is not the same man he was, and he won’t win this fall.” Months after the election, Clooney again stated that he stood by his choice in writing the op-ed saying: “I was raised to tell the truth. I feel as if there was a lot of profiles in cowardice in my party. I was not proud of that. I also believed I had to tell the truth.”
Both cases—the case of Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News and the debate of Biden’s declining fitness for office—have been spun six ways to Sunday by friends and foes of the GOP. The same two cases have been spun another six ways to Sunday by friends and foes of the opposing team.
In my opinion, democracy would do better if more free speech and honesty were to come from either side’s tent. Or better yet, from both tents.