What is the truth? For many it is whatever they want it to be, or told it should be

 

What is the "truth"? What it is, or what people want to believe it is? After the Johnny Depp verdict, "journalist" Moira Donegan wrote in The Guardian that the trial was an "orgy of misogyny." What people were not talking about at the time was that Donegan herself was being sued by New Orleans journalist Stephen Elliot for libel after she put his name on a "shitty media men" list containing accusations against male journalists by anonymous accusers.  The list was circulated by among others the New York Times in 2018 during the height of the MeToo allegations against Harvey Weinstein, and of course the "truth" of the list was assumed simply because we are supposed to "believe all women."

The only YouTuber I've come across talking about this case was Jimmy Dore, and he provided some screenshots of the original "shitty media men" posting by Donegan, which originally remained up for just 12 hours but not before it was picked up by several media outlets.  Here we see Donegan "explaining" how women should submit their anonymous accusations, with a few "disclaimers" that show just how sinister this enterprise was:

 

 

Note that the composer wants it both ways: both damage the accused and give herself an "out" if the accusations are frivolous or false. Many of the accusations were silly, petty and ridiculous, but others, like that against Elliot, were more serious, and his writing career tanked after his agent dumped him. Dore noted that all the men on the list had a case to sue for libel. Elliot had sued for $1.5 million, and the case was settled out of court last week, with Elliot receiving a six-figure payment from Donegan, although it is not clear that the written retraction of the accusation against him that was requested was filed. According to the Washington Post,

Elliott, in his recent statement, called the list a “false accusation machine” and “inherently evil, and indefensible.” Because the case was dismissed in the settlement, Elliott’s accuser’s identity hasn’t been revealed, but Elliott believes it was a woman he fired from The Rumpus, a literary journal he founded. “I don’t really care who put me on the list. That wasn’t the point,” Elliott wrote. “I was suing Moira and she was the only person I meant to sue. Whoever put me on that list is deeply disturbed and Moira was taking advantage of people like that.” “I am glad the lawsuit is over,” Elliott added. “I filed the lawsuit for moral reasons. I felt there was a moral obligation, and I don’t regret that at all.”

For her part, Donegan naturally claimed no accountability for creating a list of false accusations, complaining that she was "naive" in believing the list would not go public (well of course she wanted it too, she just didn't think she would be sued) and she was not "surprised" that the issue was not the accusations themselves, but the list itself. The truth of course, was not the point; the list was just a hit piece that the misandrist Donegan concocted to "advance" her own personal agenda.

Meanwhile life goes on, and truth takes a beating. This morning on ABC News, Rep. Mike Turner attacked the Biden Administration over China brokering a normalization of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, that had technically been broken off in 2015. So we can expect that China had some ulterior motive to do this? Probably, since to be frank, the U.S. and its European allies have little in common policy-wise with the Middle East and Iran save for oil, which is why the U.S. should be thinking ahead to a time without oil to run the country.

So what does Turner think we should be doing? Sell Saudi Arabia our most advanced jet fighters it could use against Israel? Well, it seems that the Saudis are holding a peace offering to Israel—with the demand that it help broker an arms deal with the U.S.—but as “defense” against whom if not Iran? The moderator insisted that Turner offer his own “plan” to counter China’s dealings as opposed to what the Biden administration is doing, and Turner stumbled and mumbled something about Trump’s proposal to ban Tik-Tok. Oh wow, that’s going to stop China from aiming more nuclear missiles our way. It is so typical of House Republicans—all attack and no useful ideas of their own.

We can all say WTF is Kevin McCarthy trying to “say” by allowing Marjorie Taylor Greene a speaker pro-tempore position for a day, and allowing her to bring on former Trump-appointed CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield to whine about how he was excluded from discussions on Covid-19 response because he was seen as a Covid-denier and political charlatan, and was blamed for the disastrous initial response to the virus by kowtowing to Trump’s claim that virus threat would be over in a few days. By  now most people know that Greene has an agenda that no one should trust, but somehow she is seen as useful by the party because the most conspiracy-minded among the populace is the most reliably “enthusiastic” of the Republican "base."

Back in the “good old days” before cable television and the Internet, news programing was dominated by the few major networks that prided themselves on reporting the facts and only rarely betraying emotion or overtly attempting to “influence” opinion. News anchors and reporters prided themselves on their “respectability” and being perceived as being honest brokers of the truth. Until cable arrived, there were only three major networks battling for control of viewers’ eyeballs and ears, so even the last-rated news programming had high ratings compared to today. Radio was the dominion of those who wanted to express opinions outside the mainstream, and of course like Rush Limbaugh in his early days, they were mostly “entertainers” back in the day.

CNN was satirized in Anchorman 2, as the beginning of where the “news” became what people “wanted” to hear, not what they “needed” to hear in order to boost ratings. But this is more true of right-wing “news,” where we are learning from the New York Times that there was turmoil within Fox News during the 2020 presidential election about states like Arizona and Georgia were being “called” despite viewer backlash against the network. Even the network's so-called “face” of “mainstream” news, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, felt compelled to grovel before pro-Trump anger by insisting that they shouldn’t be made to say anything that would further enrage viewers, such as by telling them the truth. But Fox News had set themselves up with far-right prime time commentary that had long abandoned the so-called mantra of “fair and balanced” which it never was anyways, and tried to make up for it by giving a forum for election fraud conspiracy crackpots, which was a factor leading to January 6.

Today, the major cable news programming only seems to want to differentiate themselves from the others ideologically, Fox News on the right, MSNBC on the left and CNN allegedly in the “center,” which of course it isn’t; you can see that from the “drama” on the new morning show line-up with Don Lemon and his two white female co-hosts, where we saw that gender politics “trumps” racism at the network. And perhaps it is so in "real life" as well; I'm starting to see those anti-harassment videos my employer makes us watch as gender gaslighting and harassment; what about the stereotyping and prejudices I have to endure from ignorant people almost every day?

The “truth” about the world is increasingly becoming a battle between facts and what people want to hear. Some people just want to hear people justify their own paranoia and prejudices. I listen to right-wing YouTube commentators who have a million subscribers, and they just talk about is wrong the “left”; they never offer any “plans” about what they would do alternatively, other than not do what the “left” is doing even it makes sense. After all, there are people “smarter” than the rest of us, meaning corporations and billionaires, who have all the “answers,” even if they don't necessarily want to tell us what they are. That is quite different from left-wing talk about cause and effect, and solution and effect.

Another frustrating issue is that politics simply “Trumps” the truth in all things. We can talk about the right and left all day to no apparent purpose, but then you have  the single-minded devotees of their own propaganda where “truth” isn’t really the point anyways. Take for instance the MeToo “movement,” in which often anonymous women accuse men of offenses for which no proof is required in the pursuit of vengeance or vindictiveness. The potential for abuse inherent in the MeToo movement should be obvious to everyone; the “believe all women” mantra is obviously one that can be exploited for personal and activist reasons, and its devotees are obviously the last on the list who seem capable of understanding how this Frankenstein monster can be exploited for nefarious purposes when actual evidence is not required.  

We can ask ourselves, for example, what were these people listening to when they heard Amber Heard’s voice which often sounded like a possessed creature out of The Exorcist, or calling Johnny Depp a “baby”—as opposed to a “monster”—when he desired to escape illogical “arguments” that Heard clearly enjoyed when it was clear that Depp was by nature a drama-avoider? We actually hear Heard telling him that her violent behavior wasn’t anything “new,” so he should be used to it. What were Heard’s die-hard supporters hearing that everyone else was? Or did they simply refuse to hear at all? Were they really so easily conned by Heard’s performances on the stand, which were a 180 degree turn from her sneering, smug 2016 deposition in which we would have expected her to react with more “trauma” if her claims were actually true?

Last week YouTuber Colonel Kurtz came under attack by NBC News “technology expert” and “social media critic” Kat Tenbarge, who frankly is just someone with a journalism degree who was probably hired for the position by NBC for cynical political reasons, apparently “OK” with someone with more “opinions’ on such matters rather than someone who has any actual expertise on the subjects she discusses. What made this interesting is that male YouTubers are usually the ones accused of being “influencers” on opinion concerning the credibility of people like Heard and now Evan Rachel Wood, because the accusation of “misogyny” is more easily thrown at them, despite the fact that many women with their own YouTube channels have been no less harsh in their assessments, but have generally been "overlooked."

Of course, Colonel Kurtz has been the principle driver in questioning the accusations against Marilyn Manson, who frankly is “low-hanging fruit” because of his public persona, and an easy target for people with an evil agenda to come after. One of his accusers has recanted and accused Wood and her gang of manipulating herself and others into making false accusations, and this obviously has upset people like Tenbarge, who probably because of her own narcissism and sense of “victimization”—I mean, how many people even heard of her anyways before she started making insane defenses of Heard?—she is incapable of admitting mistakes or being objective if her gender politics is on the line.

But the question of “truth” goes even beyond that. Wood testified before the California state assembly about her alleged abuse at the hands of Manson, and became the “face” of the Phoenix Act, which as mentioned in a previous post was the law that allowed that absurd Romeo and Juliet lawsuit against Paramount Pictures that will likely do more harm to the reputations of the accusers than to that great film.

What if it comes to pass that this law came about largely on the proven false testimony of the individual who is the “face” of the law? How embarrassing will that be for the lawmakers who took Wood’s testimony as “gospel truth,” when the real truth is that it was all mostly self-serving lies by someone who was now “ashamed” that some of things she consented to doing in the past might be “embarrassing” to her, and now she needs someone else to blame rather than taking personal responsibility for her own actions? 

Of course she and those single-minded devotees to their own paranoid agendas like Tenbarge are going to react to exposers of the truth like cornered raccoons. Admittedly a cornered raccoon is not something you want to mess with, but that only underlines the courage of those who feel they have a duty to speak the truth.