Unless
you’ve spent the past several days floating aimlessly through the
heavens in a malfunctioning space pod, you’ve probably heard a thing or
two about so-called “alternative facts.”
For all you wayward interstellar travelers out there, here’s a quick
refresher on how this became an actual term.
Kellyanne
Conway, who is perhaps President Trump’s top advisor, was on “Meet the
Press” recently talking to host Chuck Todd -- the “Chuckmeister,” as I
like to call him. He was asking
Conway why the new administration keeps insisting that Trump’s
swearing-in ceremony drew the largest inaugural crowd ever, when aerial
photos clearly showed evidence to the contrary.
“Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts,” said Conway.
“Alternative facts aren’t facts,” Todd responded. “They are falsehoods.”
Way to go, Chuckmeister.
It
was a rare example of a television news host actually calling BS on a
flat-out lie. Certainly laudable, considering how most TV pundits have
become enabling and sycophantic. But
Conway’s comments are a demarcation point of sorts. The term
“alternative facts” gives weight and heft to a new era, one in which the
truth is irrelevant, evidence is to be dismissed, inaccuracies are
tolerated and reality is in the eye of the beholder. Civic
life has become like “Let’s Make a Deal”: If people don’t like the
facts that are tucked away behind door number one, they can swap them
for whatever’s behind door number two. If the truth doesn’t comport with
their particular worldview, they now have an alternative,
and with the White House endorsing this philosophy, one no longer need
be ashamed of one’s tinfoil hat.
My
inclination is to rail against this trend, to stand on a high rooftop
and beat my chest and proclaim, in my deepest Tarzan bellow, that there
can be only one objective reality.
You know what, though? Let’s roll with this for a second. Let’s adopt
Conway’s premise that “alternative facts” are an acceptable form of
information. That means I can make any number of outlandish claims about
myself, and people have to accept it because
it’s simply an alternative to what’s true. There are some deep creative
opportunities here. A chance at reinvention. Here are a few alternative
facts about myself:
While
leading a scientific expedition across the Yukon, I was attacked by a
bear the size of a small office building. Using only rudimentary jiu
jitsu training and the butter knife
on a Swiss Army keychain, I subdued the bear and became the de facto
ruler of the northwestern Canadian forests. Now all I have do is snap my
fingers and an army of badgers appears, dropping nuts and berries at my
feet and genuflecting to their new golden
god. True story!
I
was the original choice to play CIA analyst and ex-marine Jack Ryan in
the 1990 film adaptation of “The Hunt For Red October,” but I had to
drop out of the project because I was
in third grade and had a book report due. Luckily, after getting an “A”
on the report, I was considered a top-shelf genius and was hired as a
consultant by NASA. There, I led the team that developed a robot which
automatically folds astronauts’ underwear while
they’re out making repairs to the International Space Station. Believe
me!
When
I was in high school I was bitten by a radioactive spider and gained
the ability to climb walls and lift objects several times my own body
weight. I was going to parlay these
newfound superpowers into a side career as a crime-fighting vigilante,
but there wasn’t enough money in it, so I entered the world of
professional boxing, dominating the sport for a brief period using the
alias “Evander Holyfield.” No, really!
See,
now I’m conflicted. I can almost see -- almost -- how blatantly making
things up would be a fun exercise, a way to test the bounds of what
people will consider feasible. Only
here’s the difference: Sean Spicer is the spokesperson for the
executive branch of the most powerful government in the world. People
will believe what he says. If what he says is untrue, then you have
legions of American citizens judging the new administration,
and making future decisions in the voting booth, based on what the
Chuckmeister correctly referred to as falsehoods.
It’s
become fashionable these days to label politicians we don’t like as
Hitler-esque, but the way the current administration is handling
information is more reminiscent of Hitler’s
right-hand man, Joseph Goebbels. A master of propaganda, Goebbels once
said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will
eventually come to believe it.” And you know what? He was right.
I
hate making the analogy, because pointing the finger at politicians and
public officials we don’t like and calling them a Nazi has become a
tired cliché, and an overreaction in
most cases. Only this isn’t most cases. Truth, and the public’s respect
for it, is at stake.
Did
I tell you I knew Kellyanne Conway once? Yup. Sean Spicer, too. We were
all starring in an off-Broadway production of the 1959 film classic
“Some Like It Hot” -- Conway played
the Marilyn Monroe part, I was Jack Lemmon’s character and Spicer was
in the Tony Curtis role. I had to learn how to play an acoustic floor
bass, so for months I took lessons from a jazz maestro named Bubba Love,
who was also a 12-foot-tall orangutan. I ripped
on that bass until my fingers broke out in blisters, achieving
veritable virtuoso status, and after the play’s run ended, the three of
us toured the country as a power trio, thrilling audiences with
instrumental arrangements of old hip-hop classics. You haven’t
lived until you’ve heard Run DMC’s “You Be Illin’” on a French horn.
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