I find it hard to read the angry pundit. I have no desire to be infused with someone else’s steaming emotions. Nonetheless, I have grown more sympathetic. The anger is all too easily understood.
R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is often the angry pundit. In “Fourth Estate follies,” Tyrrell Jr. explains how he became unsuited to do a particular political talk show.
Tyrrell gets a call requesting his appearance on a talk show.
A media booker was at my ear inquiring whether I would accept the invitation of a well-known cable news show to talk about how the Republican Party was being affected by Obama critics who have been harassing Democratic politicians with claims that the president did not have a legitimate birth certificate and was born abroad, perhaps in Botswana or Upper Volta or Lapland.
Tyrrell agrees to appear. In fact, he has good news.
Choosing me to discuss the president’s national origins was an inspired choice. A crack reporter of mine at the American Spectator had investigated the matter when it was a hot rumor during the presidential election and found no empirical evidence in support of the story.
Better yet, the Spectator’s reporter found evidence militating against the story. At the time of President Obama’s birth in 1961, a notice of the blessed event was published in the major Hawaiian newspaper. I would not rule out dark and treacherous conspiracies by a Democratic president, especially one in cahoots with Rahm Emanuel, but a conspiracy going back almost five decades exceeds even Mr. Emanuel’s diablerie.
Unfortunately, Tyrrell’s good news disqualified him. Tyrrell’s good news did not fit the script.
Back comes my disappointed booker after conveying the good news that we would be setting the record straight on the show shortly. Alas, the show’s producers did not want me to set the record straight. They had wanted me to defend the false story. But I reminded the booker that I knew the story to be false. In fact, I had provided the show with irrefutable proof that the story is false. Mr. Obama is American-born.
The show proceeded to find a guest who would repeat the false story, either knowingly or out of ignorance — so much for getting to the truth of issues on television. As for me, I would never knowingly publish anything I knew to be untrue, not in this column or in the American Spectator.
Facts often seem dull and unexciting. We want the entertainment of conflict. We want someone else to blame and demonize, but the facts do not always affirm our world view. Then we are obligated to work towards the Truth. Then we must be prepared to discard a portion of our beliefs and rework them to fit the facts. Then we must support news organizations more concerned with news than with entertainment.
If you want the full effect of Tyrrell’s anger with the major media, read his column, “Fourth Estate follies.” Then try understand how we contribute to this twisted use of “the news as entertainment rather than the dissemination and analysis of fact.” Do you go for the facts or do you “thrive” on meaningless and pointless debate? The choice is yours. The news media provides us the news in whatever form we are willing to receive it. Nothing more. Nothing less.
The Cartoons
