What do they have in common? Distortions, fakery and naked, explosive lies. Naked, in the sense that we all can see them but somehow they continue to be repeated as fact.
I didn’t hear what Jimmy Kimmel said, but I read what he said, which is precisely, exactly this:
“We reached some alarming lows over the weekend, with the MAGA crowd desperately attempting to depict the individual who killed Charlie Kirk as anything but one of their own, while striving to gain political leverage from the situation.”
That’s precisely, exactly what the MAGA crowd had been (and still are) attempting.
Yet here’s how those sentiments are distorted in today’s Daily News, for one (although I’ve read virtually the same distortion elsewhere) — bewilderingly, in an article about the negotiations between Disney and Kimmel’s reps to get Kimmel back on the air:
Kimmel’s ousting was specifically prompted by remarks he made during his opening monologue Monday night, suggesting that Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old accused of killing Kirk, appeared to align more with MAGA beliefs despite the right’s efforts to condemn the left.
I’ve bolded the crucial phrase. Kimmel did not say or suggest anything like that. He made no suggestion about Tyler Robinson’s beliefs. He talked about the MAGA crowd’s beliefs.
And Trump’s ear? Here’s how the New York Times recently described it:
It was the first assassination attempt since 1981 to wound a current or former president — a bullet grazed Mr. Trump’s ear.
So, folks, we are informed this was an “assassination attempt” and that “a bullet grazed Mr. Trump’s ear.”
I don’t blame the Times or any other news medium for clashing sharply with my personal perception of that whole…what should I call it? I’m ever so tired of the word, “performance.” The media properly questioned the facts, did what they could investigate, met what I recall was a massive roadblock, and gave up. What else can they do now?
I did see the video clip numerous times and saw what I believe was a childishly scripted, clumsy enactment (with prop blood) of a scene ripped off a mediocre fictional TV cop series. (I’ve been watching a ton of them lately, and all of them are more credible than Trump’s idea of courage in the face of an owie. I mean, “Fight! Fight!” with the fist? What was the guy talking about? And who wrote that dreadful script?) And if you’re going to stage such a thing, you need to protect the supporters who haven’t read the script and are killed because of it.
From scratch (not an ear) I believed it was a set-up. Even though the news media do not have the evidence to question it or to put “assassination attempt” in quotes, I don’t believe it.
As for Iraq, I have no reason to fully understand why I — and lots of other people — did not believe Saddam had those WMD. In my gut I knew Bush and crew were lying mostly because Bush wanted to do that War President strut. All of them lied, for a messy, horrible, utterly failed war which never should have happened, a war which was, from scratch, a Republican fake.
I was reminded of the lie a couple of days ago when I wandered into a film I’d not really known about, Rob Reiner’s 2018 Shock and Awe, which does for the news organization, Knight-Ridder, who had the proof that the WMD were a lie and kept trying to publish the story, what All The President’s Men did for the Washington Post and Watergate.
It isn’t as great a film but it certainly makes its point. Its sharp point, about how big lies are shoved right in our faces and leave us who do not believe them sputtering on our islands of reality and fact.