Truth or Parody?

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Lord, it’s hot out there. It’s hot enough to make a bishop cuss. Birds are pulling worms out of the ground using potholders. I saw a dog chasing a cat and they were both walking.

So, since it’s too hot to go outside, let’s stay inside and play a game. How about one of my favorite games: “Truth or Parody”? I’ll tell you an occurrence and you tell me if it actually happened, or if it’s satire.

Ready? Here we go:

1. A Republican congressman from Florida created a series of awkward moments during a congressional hearing when he warmly welcomed a pair of witnesses with brown skin and East Asian names by talking about how he wanted closer relations with their country and how fond he was of “Bollywood” movies (a genre of musical cinema made in India). Unfortunately, the witnesses were both Americans who are senior officials in the U.S. government.

2.  Ex-Alaska Gov. and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin recently unveiled an online subscription video service where her fans can pay $9.95 a month to watch messages from Palin and hear her commentaries on a variety of issues. Unfortunately, the launch of the service was spoiled by a glitch in which all of the videos quit halfway through playback.

3. Outgoing Minnesota Rep. and potential presidential candidate Michele Bachmann recently proposed solving the problem of unaccompanied immigrant children by creating labor camps, or as she called them, “Americanization facilities.” She said, “We’d get private-sector business leaders to locate to those facilities and give these children low-risk jobs to do. And they’d learn about the American way of life, earn their keep, and everyone wins in the end.”

4. An Arizona state legislator spoke out against national Common Core standards by claiming he’d heard they used “fuzzy math” that “substitutes letters for numbers at some points” — a description of algebra.

And now, the answers:

1.  True. Last Thursday, freshman Rep. Curt Clawson, despite having a list of witnesses to a congressional hearing before him, mistook Assistant Secretary of State Nisha Biswal and Assistant Secretary of Commerce Arun Kumar as representatives of the Indian government.

According to an article in Foreign Policy Magazine, “Although both Biswal and Kumar were introduced as U.S. officials by the chairman of the Asia and Pacific subcommittee, Clawson repeatedly asked them questions about ‘your country’ and ‘your government,’ in reference to the state of India.”

Clawson (the tea party candidate, naturally) later used a basketball metaphor, describing the incident as “throwing an air ball” on his part. I’d say it’s more like he came on the court and tackled one of his assistant coaches after unsuccessfully trying to throw him out at third.

2.  Half true. Sarah Palin’s new Internet subscription website is designed, in her words, to “go beyond the sound bites and cut through the media’s politically correct filter.” And, one suspects, avoid those pesky confrontations with reality that even the formerly fawning Fox News has been forcing on her.

But the part about the videos cutting off halfway through was my little joke. Given half-term governor Palin’s track record in regard to sticking with things, however, I wouldn’t spring for the long-term subscription.

3.  Parody. One that caught quite a few people, because when it comes to Congresswoman Crazy Eyes, no pronouncement seems too bizarre. This is, after all, the woman who recently said that the unaccompanied children flooding the U.S. Southern border came from “Yemen, Iran, Iraq and other terrorist nations,” and that they might be carrying “Ebola and other diseases like that,” even though there is not a shred of evidence for either claim.

4.  True. State Sen. Al Melvin, R-Tucson, told a Senate education committee that he was suspicious of Common Core standards because they’d been “hijacked by Washington.” Asked by another legislator if he’d actually seen the standards, Melvin said he’d been “exposed to them” and that there was “fuzzy math that substitutes letters for numbers.” For God’s sake, let’s not expose the poor man to calculus. Those Greek letters will blow his little mind.

A maxim developed on the Internet, known as Poe’s Law, states that “without a clear indication of the author’s intent, it is difficult or impossible to tell the difference between an expression of sincere extremism and a parody of extremism” (definition via Wikipedia).

Or, as I put it, “The hard part about satire is staying ahead of reality.” This difficulty is particularly pronounced when you’re dealing with the party of proud ignorance, manic xenophobia, and general craziness.

Enjoy your August!

Is Hillary Clinton a Replicant? Some Say Yes, Some Say No...

You know, if I was to tell you in these pages that a Republican politician was contesting his loss in a primary election on the grounds that his victorious opponent was, in fact, dead and being impersonated by a synthetic body double, you’d probably roll your eyes and go “he’s gone too far this time. That doesn’t even work as satire.” 

Well, maybe it doesn’t, but it’s actually true. In Oklahoma’s 3d District, Timothy Ray Murray, whose website [now taken down] describes him as a “human, born in Oklahoma,” got himself roundly shellacked in the primary by the incumbent, Rep Frank Lucas, with Murray taking a mere 5.2% of the vote to Lucas’ 82.8%. You’d think this would be a knockout blow to Murray’s campaign “to help bring House leadership back to traditional values.” But wait, Murray says, not so fast. “It is widely known,” Murray asserts in a press release addressed to “News Person”, that “Rep. Frank D. Lucas is no longer alive and has been displayed [sic] by a look alike.” Poor Frank met his end, it seems, on a “white stage” in Southern Ukraine, where he and “a few other Oklahoma and other States’ Congressional Members” were executed by hanging at the hands of (of course) The World Court. This rendered Lucas ineligible to serve on account of being, as noted above, dead.  

This is not the sort of thing a “traditional values” guy like Murray is going to take lying down. “I will NEVER,” he promises, “use Artificial Intelligence look alike [sic] to voice what The Representative’s Office is not doing nor own a robot look alike.” Well, I know I’m reassured. 

In truth, Timothy Ray Murray may have done a huge favor for the Raving Nutter Wing of the Republican Party (aka “the base”). Now that birtherism has been thoroughly discredited except in the heads of a few sad dead-enders and the grifters who prey on them, maybe the GOP can embrace “make the Democratic candidate prove she’s not a replicant” as their pet lunacy for the next couple of years. 

It can start, as such madness often does, on the Internet. A few well-placed posts on a few fringe cites claiming that, say, Hillary Clinton’s “fall in the shower” in December 2012 was actually fatal and that she’s been replaced by a vat-grown flesh-droid with the personalities of Saul Alinsky, Huey P. Newton, and Bill Ayers (preserved on floppy disk by Steve Jobs in 1995) downloaded into its blank consciousness. Gradually, the idea will percolate upwards to the slightly less nutty environs of the right-wing blogosphere, like National Review Online, where someone will observe “of course, Hillary Clinton could just dispel the rumors by providing a DNA sample.” 

After that, it’ll snowball. Fox News will soon be running show after show, with the usual endless parade of outrage-mongers looking into the camera with brows furrowed and demanding “Where’s the DNA?” 

Finally, Clinton will make the mistake of knuckling under and actually providing a sample. Then the blood, so to speak, will really be in the water. Overnight a few dozen self-appointed DNA experts will flood the Internet, insisting that the test is a fake, because, I don’t know, the streaks on the test card are the wrong shade of gray on their computer monitors or something. Nothing will do to prove Clinton’s humanity, the GOP will say, but full genome sequencing. “I’m not saying that Mrs. Clinton is really a replicant,” they’ll say piously, “but I’d like to see the sequencing of all of her chromosomal DNA as well as DNA contained in the mitochondria.” It won’t matter that that’s something that none of them will have never heard of before the brouhaha. Angry Tea Partiers (as if there are any other kind) will show up at Town Hall meetings with an American flag in one hand and a bag of disreputable looking goo in the other, raging at insufficiently crazy public officials:  "I have a DNA sample here that says I’m human! Why are you people ignoring the chromosomal DNA!?” before they drown out the response by singing “God Bless America.” Finally, Clinton will grit her teeth and undergo the procedure—the results of which will also be denounced as fake by “DNA experts” who failed high school chemistry. And the beat will go on…

Too crazy, you say? Could never happen, you say? I would have said that about birtherism, until it described pretty much the same arc I’ve laid out above. If there’s one thing researching this column has taught me, it’s that there is literally no theory too outlandish for wingnuts and their captive media to promote from fringe to mainstream and no evidence that they’ll accept to refute it. It could happen here…

Dusty Rhoades lives, writes, and practices law in Carthage. 

Running the Big Con

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

A man and a woman sat across the table from one another in a nondescript diner off the main highway. The man was older and grizzled-looking, while the woman was young and blonde, with the fresh-faced, innocent look of a high school cheerleader.

“I’ve been watching you, kid,” the man said. He saw her alarmed look and raised a hand. “Not like that. But I’ve seen you work. You’ve got instincts. You’ve got a real feel for what it takes to be a grifter, to work the big con. Once I teach you a few basic techniques, you could make a lot of money in this business. You interested?”

She leaned back in her chair, her eyes narrowed. “I’m listening,” she said.

The man ignored her cautious tone. “First,” he said, “You’ve got to show authority. People will believe anything if they think it’s coming from someone who knows. You can be wrong, dead wrong, but you can never look like you’re unsure. Never back down, never apologize, and make anyone who questions you seem like they’re the idiot. Get some guys on your crew with fancy degrees or some former military guys. Doesn’t matter if they have any idea what they’re talking about, as long as they can spin a good line of patter that supports your con.”

“Sounds expensive. And I don’t know if I want to cut that many people in on the job.”

“Kid,” the man said, “this is the big time. You can’t think small.”

The woman nodded. “OK. I guess you’re right.”

“Well, I am, but even if I wasn’t, you see how quick you were to agree with me? That’s because the key to being a confidence man — or woman — is, well, confidence.”

The woman laughed. The man noticed she was beginning to relax and smiled to himself. He was the best, and he knew what worked.

“Second,” he said, “you’ve got to use fear.”

“Fear?”

“Fear,” he said. “You’ve got to know how to scare the rubes. Make them think that someone’s getting an advantage that they’re not getting. Or that someone’s going to get what’s theirs. Fortunately for you, it’s really easy. Most people live their lives terrified of just that. They’re like that squirrel-rat creature in those “Ice Age” movies, trying to hang on to his acorn. There’s a lot of money in fear for folks like us. Which brings me to my third point.”

He held up three fingers.

“Make the mark feel like he’s something special,” he said. “Make him feel like he’s getting information from you that no one else has. Stuff that anyone but the two of you is too dumb to know or too scared to talk about. You make the mark feel like he’s part of this special group. Combine that with the whole fear thing I just talked about, and pretty soon he’ll believe it’s the two of you against everyone else.”

“Yeah,” the woman said. “I get it. Make them seem like you’re their real friend and it’s everybody else who’s the con man. Then isolate them so that your voice is the only one they hear.”

“Exactly,” the man said. “You do that right, you can get the mark to turn against his own family if he thinks they’re trying to talk him out of listening to you. If all else fails, don’t be afraid to be a bully. Anyone tries to tell the rubes something different from what you want them to hear, cut them off. Don’t let them talk.”

“Wow,” she said. “That sounds kind of … I don’t know …”

“Kid,” the man said impatiently, “what did I tell you about thinking small? This is high stakes, big-money grifting we’re talking about here. You can’t afford to be soft. Don’t tell me I was wrong about you.”

The woman thought for a long moment. In his mind’s eye, the man could almost see the wheels turning in her head until all the windows in her mental slot machine came up in dollar signs.

“So,” the man said finally. “Whaddya think?”

The blonde woman smiled. “I’m in.”

“Great,” the man said. “I think you and me are going to make a lot of money in this business, kid.”

He stood up and extended a hand.

“Welcome to Fox News.”

The Long Con

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Two weeks ago, the right-wing faithful gathered for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). It’s an event where the princes and princesses of Wingnuttia appear to rally the troops, stir the fear, and crack open the wallets and pocketbooks of donors.

It’s kind of like a Burning Man Festival for right-wingers, except instead of weed and hallucinogens, the CPAC attendees are high on paranoia, resentment and belligerence, and the CPAC headliners are more than happy to give them their fix.

Soon-to-be-ex-Rep. Michele Bachmann, for instance, gave a radio interview from CPAC in which she claimed that the reason Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer recently vetoed Arizona’s “turn away the gays” bill was that gay people had “bullied” the American people.

Bachmann also suggested using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act to arrest people who “intimidate” billionaire donors to the Republican Party.

Yeah, Michele, it’s totally the straight people and the billionaires in this country being bullied. Why, I heard that just yesterday, a couple of gay people took Gov. Brewer’s lunch money and stuffed her in her locker, and I heard someone pantsed the Koch brothers in the lunchroom.

We’re so fortunate that we have people like Rep. Bachmann to speak for the oppressed, if by “oppressed” you mean “straight, extremely rich white people.” And by the way, Michele, if I was under investigation by the FBI for money laundering and wire fraud, as you are, I wouldn’t be bringing up RICO. It might give them ideas.

When it comes to spreading the fear, however, there’s no one to match NRA President Wayne LaPierre. In a thunderous speech on March 6, LaPierre delivered the kind of doom-laden paranoid rant once restricted to unwashed men on street corners wearing sandwich boards proclaiming that the end is nigh.

We need all the guns we can get our hands on, LaPierre said, because “we know, in the world that surrounds us, there are terrorists and there are home invaders, drug cartels, carjackers, knockout gamers and rapers, and haters and campus killers, and airport killers, shopping mall killers, and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids, or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse our society that sustains us all.”

Wow. I’m sure glad I’m not him. Anyone who walks around this terrified all the time must be miserable. By the way, I’m not sure how a big stash of guns is supposed to help against “vicious waves of chemicals or disease,” but whatever.

No right-wing gathering would be complete, of course, without the appearance of the Quitta From Wassilla, half-term Gov. Sarah Palin.

And once again, Saint Sarah of the Snows did not disappoint. She delivered another parody of “Green Eggs and Ham” (“I do not like this kind of hope, and we won’t take it nope, nope, nope”) that was later revealed to be plagiarized from a chain email making the rounds two years ago.

She then proceeded to plagiarize from the NRA in suggesting a solution to the current crisis in Ukraine. “Mr. President,” she declaimed, “the only way to stop a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke.”

Wait, what? Did the Resigning Woman seriously just suggest using nukes to get Russia out of the Crimea?

Naaah, at least not by any real definition of “serious.” Palin knows she’s never going to get within a mile of the nuclear button, just as Wayne LaPierre knows his collection of gold-plated AR-15’s isn’t going to defend us against “chemicals and disease,” and Michele Bachmann knows that billionaires aren’t really being intimidated.

They, and the other headliners at CPAC, are all part of the most massive and successful Long Con in the history of this country: the modern conservative movement. It’s all about filling their coffers with contributions from people in the freest, richest country in the world whom they’ve convinced that a Stalinist gulag is right around the corner and that their stuff is about to be looted from them any moment by Those People.

And it works. Palin’s own “Sarah PAC,” for example, raised and spent more than $1.2 million last year — only $10,000 of which went to actual candidates. The rest went for “operations,” including “consultant costs” and “travel expenses,” according to FEC campaign filings. Nice work if you can get it.

Whatever their original purpose, far right fear-a-paloozas like CPAC, and the conservative movement itself, have devolved into serving two purposes: lining the pockets of grifters like Sarah Palin and Wayne LaPierre, and reminding us why they should never be let near the levers of power.

In both those respects, CPAC was a resounding success.