New confidence in big lies

We rarely hear words such as “integrity” used anymore because the counterfeit celebrity culture is thought more important and believed much more often. Confess or admit to anything that can be sold as a crazy story, true or not, and a following will emerge.

The following will admit to being deeply moved by the people undressing in public because they are “just too real.” In other words, they are not afraid to let us know who they actually are.

That they actually are gargoyles or massive liars does not matter. All that matters is that they succeed in getting our attention. Getting noticed means that they earn some bucks from selling the product, which is the mask and the contrived or improvised act they claim is themselves.

At the same time, the dissatisfactions of contemporary life bear down on, bruise or break so many Americans that an odd bitterness reigns whenever the masses find someone on which their anger can be focused.

Ignorant people confuse equal rights with equal access to being taken seriously. And they harbor anger toward those who actually know something and can prove it. Facts are seen as a contemptible form of service to elitism.

In our politics a counterfeit intellectual like William Kristol, after helping to convince John McCain that he should put Sarah Palin on the ticket, went forward

writing for The New York Times

and pretended not to have done what he had helped stage-manage. When given hard, satiric and accurate smacks from the rhetorical truncheon by Jon Stewart, of all people, it was natural that he respond at one point by using the term “the elites.” Caught by aggressive and vulgar frat-boy humor, he did not feel the need to prove himself above it.

Kristol had recognized a good act and would see if it worked for him as well as it had for Palin and everyone else who pretended to be just one of us, not an elite who went to an elite college and spends time reading newspapers, magazines and books.

Kristol proved that he was no more than a snake-oil salesman and the sort of lying oinker one can always find on both the liberal left and the conservative right, neither of which should be automatically believed. A fundamental principle of our democracy should always be look closely before you leap.

History should have made that clear. But one has to be willing to read to find out what history actually is. After all, we are talking about politicians who have only so many ways to become wealthy, one of which is to sell out to big lobbies, representing everything from insurance interests to unions.

But our problem as a nation is that we are too often Silly Putty in the hands of whoever can convince us that performance, a good act, plenty of noise and constant repetition amount to reality.

If that were not true, the childish melodramas cooked up to manipulate the audiences into screaming, howling and hissing at interminably fraudulent wrestling matches would be seen as bad jokes in the world of actual sports.

I believe that is connected to why the majority of elected congressional Republicans, only two years after selling out the American people to pharmaceutical interests and being busted for it by “60 Minutes,” could so brazenly misrepresent themselves.

Confident that they live in a commercial and celebrity culture, the Republicans sold out the country to the tune of $500 billion but now present all of their reservations about health-care reform as driven by a profound desire to save the public unnecessary expense!

In our progressively illiterate age, we should not be surprised if the Ku Klux Klan and the Nation of Islam begin to claim that they are no more than misunderstood champions of equality across the lines of color and religion. But if they say it often enough and loudly enough, some will swallow that sanctimonious lie of pure grease and fat being passed off as health food. 

— Stanley Crouch can be reached by e-mail at crouch.stanley@)gmail.com.