Seeking Some Truth – Following Up on the Republican Debate

The long column on the Republican debate in New Hampshire – Ten Old White Men in Bubble Wrap Hopping in Place – did set off one of the parties mentioned. CNN broadcast what the ten Republicans who would like their party’s nomination for the presidency had to say, but perhaps the column shouldn’t have opened with this –

 

Like Rick, the News Guy in Atlanta, many of us don’t watch the political debates … You’d think that Rick, who, with his wife, was a key person in starting CNN back in 1980, would watch out of professional interest.  But no, and does anyone really know anyone at all who watched both from start to finish. You’d have to be mad.

 

Rick, the News Guy in Atlanta, objected –

 

Me! I did! I always do – as they used to say of the proverbial yearly bath – whether I need to or not.

 

I was especially uncomfortable sitting through the Republican thing last night, mostly because, with the exception of McCain and Giuliani, I kept forgetting who it was who was speaking. (”Thank you, Governor, and now I want to ask the same question of the Senator sitting next to you.”) Is it just me, or do they all look alike?

 

But finally, consoling myself with the realization that I won’t really need to remember which guy believes what outrageous thing about this or that when it comes time to walk into the voting booth, I just sat back and listened to the lightening zap the words right out of their mouths. It was truly a cosmic experience!

 

(By the way, I wasn’t really a “key person” in the founding of CNN, except in the sense that, there being so few of us present at the creation, we were all key persons back then.)

 

Your Hollywood editor replied –

 

Wait, wait – last time around, 2004 or 2006, you said you didn’t watch such things!  I’ll look it up – it’s somewhere on my now spare computer.  But no matter, you were in the minority on this go-round.

 

I don’t think the ten look alike at all – they just all sound similarly silly.  It’s like a troop of somewhat dim-witted guys in a Marx brothers movie – those guys who always tumble through the stateroom door or some such thing, or like the three court counselors, Ping, Pang and Pong, in the Puccini opera Turandot.  They mean well, or hope people think they do, and want to appear wise, even if they have no idea what being wise might entail - they just have no clue.  It’s comic, but not very funny.

 

Maybe if one of them said the Magic Word, a duck would come down from the ceiling – another admittedly obscure reference.

 

The Giuliani thing was amazing.  Video is here.

 

Rudy Giuliani was criticized by a Catholic Bishop named Thomas J. Tobin of the Diocese of Providence in Rhode Island, over his stance on abortion.  CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked him to respond, and as Giuliani started speaking lightening from a storm up there in New Hampshire interfered with the sound system – causing a sharp crackling noise that had some of the other GOP candidates running for cover, or at least flinching. Giuliani then looked up to the skies in awe and said, “this is a very frightening thing that’s happening right now.”

 

So much irony, on so many levels, and so little time.

 

The word from Atlanta –

 

Are you sure I wasn’t talking about State of the Union speeches?

 

I can’t stand those things! Doesn’t matter who is president, when I see the pre-game shots of some just-folks recent hero-in-the-news type taking a seat next to the first lady, I find myself heading for the liquor cabinet to fortify myself for the upcoming platitudes, followed by the inevitable tally of interruptions for applause. (If they ever force me to work one of those events, I want the job of the flunky who counts the applauses.)

 

You say you don’t think the ten look alike at all – that they just all sound similarly silly.

 

Really? When I mentioned my confusion this afternoon to some nameless person after her arrival home from New Hampshire, she replied (if I heard her right) that her nameless producer on the scene declined and defaulted back to her the task of lining up the candidates backstage – on the grounds, I gather, that he didn’t want to embarrass himself by revealing he couldn’t tell most of them apart.

 

My biggest problem is trying to remember afterward which one was for enforcing the laws we already have on the books, and which one was against us all being descended from monkeys, and which is the one who missed out on his chance to sincerely thank some woman in the audience for being related to someone who died in Iraq. Or was that all one guy who just happened to look like everyone else?

 

Sadly, the Puccini reference – to me – was obscure, but the dangling duck (”Say the magic word, win a hundred dollars”) is not.

 

In fact, maybe I will mention that idea to someone I know who is either on or working closely with the so-called “Best Political Team on Television” and see if it can be somehow worked into their next debate, which I gather is coming up in late July in Charleston. Hell, they’re partnering with frigging YouTube and Google on that one – what have they got to lose?

 

Then from here in Hollywood –

 

Yeah, Rick, I think you were talking about the State of the Union thing – and I don’t watch those either.

 

If this unnamed person you mention - who might be a VP at CNN producing these debates at some level – but I wouldn’t know who – does convince the new head of the news division - who by the next debate will probably be Glenn Beck or Nancy Grace - to go with the duck thing - I want credit for the idea.

 

As for what the ten Republican candidates look like, I’m good at differentiating among old white men. You have to be one, I suppose - an old white man, that is.  As for who stands for what, I too have a hard time keeping that straight.

 

And no one cares about Puccini anyway, except of the famous “Nessun dorma” aria from that same opera that pops up over and over again in all sorts of places –

 

·         Luciano Pavarotti’s rendition of “Nessun dorma” was featured as the title music for the BBC coverage 1990 FIFA World Cup.

·         “Nessun dorma” was used in the movie Sum of All Fears, performed by Bruce Sledge.

·         It is featured in the film The Witches of Eastwick, in the scene in which Jack Nicholson cavorts with his girl friends in the swimming pool.

·         Featured in the movie Toys briefly during a monologue by the general. The moment that we hear the ending of the aria (”Vincero” or “I will win!”) is the same moment that the general shoots himself while attempting to kill a fly.

·         Featured in The Mirror Has Two Faces - Barbra Streisand’s character says that when she kisses her true love she will hear “Nessun Dorma” playing.

·         “Nessun dorma” was the inspiration for the HBO TV show Six Feet Under episode “Nobody Sleeps” (the literal translation from the Italian); it was the song sung at the lover’s funeral in the same episode.

·         Featured at the end of the film Bend it like Beckham in a soccer scene. This was undoubtedly for the benefit of the film’s British audience, who associate the song with the 1990 FIFA World Cup. (see above)

·         Featured in the film The Sea Inside as the music that inspires Ramón Sampedro to fly away from his reality.

·         The aria is sung at the end of the movie, His Butler’s Sister, by Deanna Durbin to her hoped for lover, Franchot Tone.

·         Featured also in the movie The Killing Fields when the character played by Sam Waterston watches footage from Cambodia back in New York without any news from his translator.

 

Ping, Pang and Pong get no mention anywhere, of course.  Like Polonius in Hamlet, they are blustering court fools.  Wait!  Maybe one of the Republican ten will give us the Polonius “this above all else, to thine own self be true” speech next time around, and then get stabbed.   That’d be cool.

 

From Atlanta –

 

Glenn Beck or Nancy Grace? Trust me, if any one of those clowns ends up in power and then goes for this idea, you not only won’t want the credit, you will wisely disavow any knowledge of this whole duck concept whatsoever.

 

“Wait!  Maybe one of the Republican ten will give us the Polonius “this above all else, to thine own self be true” speech next time around, and then get stabbed. That’d be cool.”

 

Better yet, after he says that, maybe some duck comes down from the ceiling with a hundred dollar bill in his mouth!

 

That’ll do.

 

On a more serious note, they ought to do something about the lying.  It may not be CNN’s job to point out that one of the candidates is flat-out lying, and Rick, the News Guy in Atlanta, has commented on that before.

 

In an item in these pages from July 27, 2003 you will find these remarks by the President – who was standing next to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan in a photo opportunity, as documented by a White House Press Release on July 14, 2003 2:11 P.M. EDT –

 

The fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region. I firmly believe the decisions we made will make America more secure and the world more peaceful.

 

This seemed at the time extraordinary.  All the news folks got it flat-out wrong.  We all watched that stuff from the UN, about how the Blix fellow and his team were in Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction and coming back to New York every few weeks to talk about what they had and had not found.  Now it seemed that never happened.  No UN inspectors ever went to Iraq.  They were never allowed in.  So the press has been irresponsible.  Why did CNN and the rest fabricate this whole thing?  Our government went to war precisely because Blix never made those trips CNN and the rest were reporting.  He wasn’t ever allowed in.  Damn.

 

There was a lot of argument as to what was going on here.  Was Bush detached from reality and actually believed this – or was he lying to make a point, thinking we would all buy the lie?

 

Back then, Rick, The News Guy in Atlanta, commented –

 

Was this a Bush “lie” or a Bush “goof”?  An argument can be made for both sides.  Technically, he’s obviously wrong. UN inspectors did obviously go in and then leave shortly before the bombing started.  On the other hand, he was probably thinking of that time before the UN resolution when Iraq actually was refusing to allow the inspectors in, at least unconditionally.

 

As for the question of what the media is to do about Bush’s comments: Nothing much.

 

Although people think journalists are always there, ready to jump all over slips like this, that’s pretty much a misconception.  Think about it. Although you may think you do, you actually rarely see news media, on their own authority, running around pointing out the lies of public officials.  What you actually see is news media running around reporting on some political opponents’ claims about the other guy’s lies.  Try as it might, objective journalism has yet to find a way to independently expose what may or may not be “lies” and even just “goofs” without appearing, maybe with some justification, like they’re just pimping for some special interest or political ideology. …

 

So we let such things pass.  But they keep happening, as Steve Benen notes in Do they think we won’t remember?

 

In the New Hampshire debate, the very first question went to Mitt Romney, who was asked whether it was “a mistake for us to invade Iraq.”  There was some hedging, but then Romney argued this –

 

[If] Saddam Hussein had opened up his country to IAEA inspectors, and they’d come in and they’d found that there were no weapons of mass destruction, had Saddam Hussein, therefore, not violated United Nations resolutions, we wouldn’t be in the conflict we’re in.

 

But he didn’t do those things, and we knew what we knew at the point we made the decision to get in.

 

Benen –

 

Now, I realize that 2003 was a long time ago. In fact, way back then, Romney was a pro-choice governor who supported gay rights, stem-cell research, and liberal immigration policies.

 

But there’s no reason to fabricate historical events that never occurred. Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, but … he did open up his country to IAEA inspectors. They conducted searches and found that his regime didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. This isn’t a matter of opinion or perspective — this is what happened.

 

If Romney wants to make the case that the invasion was wise, fine, let’s hear his case. But in discussing weapons inspectors, his version of events isn’t just wrong; it’s fantasy.

 

I should add, however, that it’s a fantasy the White House really likes.

 

Why does he say that?  He notes that just this January Vice President Cheney did it again – he told a national television audience that Saddam “kicked out all of the inspectors” – as Benen comments, “despite, you know, reality.”

 

And Benen reminds us of the Joe Conason compilation of how often the president said this – as recently as March 2006, he said he went to war in part because Saddam “chose to deny inspectors.”

 

What’s up with that?

 

As for the June 2003 event, when the president first said this, we are reminded how that was handled –

 

In one of my favorite media moments of Bush’s presidency, the Washington Post reported the remarks the next day, telling readers, “The president’s assertion that the war began because Iraq did not admit inspectors appeared to contradict the events leading up to war this spring.” (Yes, “appeared.”)

 

A few days later, the Post’s Dana Milbank, who co-wrote the piece, was asked on CNN how Bush could make such a spectacularly dumb mistake. Milbank said, “I think what people basically decided was this is just the president being the president…. He is under a great deal of pressure.” (Yes, reporters expect Bush to say things that are patently false.)

 

Well, reporters do expect that.  Actually, after all these years, everyone does. We’ve learned what to expect of our government. It’s a matter of “learned cynicism” – a kind of psychological conditioning.

 

Benen says “now, by adopting the truly ridiculous White House line, Romney joins this illustrative company.”

 

What’s up with that?

 

Here’s the suggestion –

 

Does Romney (and the White House) expect us not to remember what actually happened in 2003? Do these guys think, “I’ll lie about the inspectors and maybe no one will pick up on it”?

 

Do they think we’re that dumb?

 

No, not at all – well, maybe a little. But Benen is wrong.  Rick, the News Guy in Atlanta is right – “objective journalism has yet to find a way to independently expose what may or may not be ‘lies’ and even just ‘goofs’ without appearing, maybe with some justification, like they’re just pimping for some special interest or political ideology.”

 

So really, you’re safe with CNN. Make up what you want – fabricate historical events that never occurred – whatever serves your interests.  Be bold.  Some of it may stick to the wall, but no one in the media will “blitz” you with reminders of what actually happened.  It’s sort of an honors system.

 

There is the problem with people’s memories – but people are easily made forgetful.  It’s an art.

 

Maybe the duck isn’t a bad idea. Say something absolutely not true and the duck drops down and you get a hundred dollars. That’d get the press folks off the hook – you make it a game.

 

That is what it seems to be a game.  And there is still little reason to watch these things.

 

 

FOOTNOTE –

 

You Bet Your Life was an American radio and television quiz show. The first and most famous version was hosted by Groucho Marx, of Marx Brothers fame, with the unflappable announcer and assistant George Fenneman. The show debuted on radio in 1947, then made the transition to the NBC television network in 1950. The television version was changed very little from the radio version. It was filmed before a studio audience, then slightly edited for television broadcast. In 1960 it was renamed The Groucho Show and ran a further year.

 

Groucho would be introduced to the music of “Hooray for Captain Spaulding,” his signature song introduced in the 1930 film Animal Crackers. Fenneman would say, “Here he is, the one, the ONLY…” and the audience would finish with a thunderous “GROUCHO!” In the early years Groucho would feign surprise: “Oh that’s ME, Groucho Marx!” Much of the tension of the show revolved around whether any of the contestants, in pre-contest conversation with Groucho, would say the “secret word,” a common word seemingly selected at random and revealed to the audience at the show’s outset. If a contestant uttered the word, a mustachioed toy duck (wearing eyeglasses and with a cigar in its bill, resembling Groucho, although in one special episode, Groucho’s brother, Harpo came down instead.) would descend from the ceiling to bring the contestant $50; Marx would sometimes slyly direct their conversation in such a way as to encourage the word to come up.

 

Now you know.