my foam flecked frenzy over fictional facts

Is the best defense always a good offense?
Eric Boehlert (a Salon editor who now writes for Media Matters) is getting a lot of attention in the blogosphere right now because of the ferocity of his defense of the MSM’s phony “Jamil Hussein” story. Rick Moran in particular delves into Boehlert’s thinking with a great post in which he concludes that “Boehlert is so busy trashing conservative bloggers and trying to demonize their motives that he’s missing a great story….”
I think the making up of “Jamil Hussein” is the story, because the controversy surrounding it goes to the heart of a greater human problem — how ideology corrupts thinking to the point where facts are seen as subordinate, incidental, even irrelevant.
The last time I discussed “Jamil,” the details were still hotly debated, and I was reminded of my relatively meaningless battle over “George Harleigh” (a fictitious professor science professor who had worked for both Nixon and Reagan, and who could always be depended on to sound off about the horrors of Bush).
I soon noticed that there’s a downside to debunking fraudulent people or claims. The people who make them up — and most of those who agree with them — simply don’t care. Because the characters and claims are invented to support what they already believe fervently, debunking them does not “count.”
Lies presented in furtherance of a greater “truth” are not really considered to be lies, at least not in the moral sense. The idea is to persuade people, and if fictional people or incidents have to be used, that’s OK, as long as it’s in the interest of the greater truth.
The problem I have with this approach is that I don’t like being lied to. Even when I agree with the cause the lie is intended to support. I don’t find lies emotionally fulfilling because they pollute the process of thought. When lies are presented as “news reports,” it’s even worse, because it makes me distrustful every time I pick up the paper or turn on the television.
I’m sorry, but I think Eric Boehlert’s “might as well be true” defense is not helpful to the cause of honest journalism, and I agree with Allahpundit:

He’s written two columns about Jamilgate now; there are enough links embedded in both to show he’s done his homework. Which means he knows very well this wasn’t the only story the AP’s used Jamil Hussein for. The actual number, as Michelle notes, exceeds 60. He also knows that the AP originally claimed four mosques were burned and that that claim has since disappeared into the ether without so much as a clarification. Just like he also knows, courtesy of Robert Bateman, that it’s unlikely in the extreme based on Hussein’s location that he’d be a credible witness for the wide variety of attacks sourced to him by the AP. All of which make this story highly dubious, yet none of which Boehlert sees fit to mention anywhere in his piece. Why?
Because he doesn’t care if the story’s bogus or not. He’ll say en passant that he does because he knows, as a journalist and media critic, that he has to. But it’s strictly pro forma. His position seems to be that the story’s true in the Larger Sense, as a microcosm of the brutality in Iraq, even if it’s not, you know, technically true (“as if an AP retraction would change a thing on the ground in Baghdad, where electricity remains scarce, but sectarian death squads roam freely”). In other words, “fake but accurate.” That’s his bottom line here and that’s why it’s dishonest of him and his pals to even pretend to care whether the report’s accurate. As far as they’re concerned, if Jamil Hussein turns out to be real, the story’s true; if he turns out not to be real, the story’s True. They can’t go wrong. Meanwhile the AP, if it’s guilty of bad facts to whatever greater or lesser degree, gets an almost completely free pass.

(Via Michelle Malkin, who has done a huge amount of work detailing the bogus “Jamil Hussein” story.)
Boehlert’s approach is to minimize the seriousness of the fictional character and reports, and mount ad hominem style ideological attacks against those who debunked them. While the debunkers’ primary crime is simply that they are “warbloggers” whose pro-war ideology is wrong, he also misleadingly splices selected fragments from quotes (whether this is “Dowdifying” or Issikoffing I’m not sure) to make JunkYardBlog’s SeeDubya and the Anchoress look like heinous opponents of free speech. What they actually said — along with the context — are as unimportant to Boehlert as whether or not Jamil Hussein exists. As Boehlert concludes, it is only the larger truth matters:

despite the hundreds of stories AP files from Iraq each week, and the thousands posted annually since the invasion, warbloggers can only find fault with a single story, yet insist that one is enough to tarnish the AP’s Iraq reporting and all mainstream news reporting from Baghdad.
It’s not going to work. If warbloggers want to prove that cowardly American journalists are being duped by local Iraqi stringers pushing a terrorist agenda, or that the AP is guilty of chronically manufacturing bad news, they are going to have to do more than flush out Jamil Hussein.

Similarly, if Boehlert has misquoted warbloggers, that does not matter, because the point is that they support an immoral war.
By this logic, I was wasting my time debunking the fictitious George Harleigh. Because, even if there was no such professor, there are many more who would have said — and did say — the same thing. That Bush was bad.
What difference does one little fiction make? And what difference does it make if some impudent warbloggers are quoted out of context? Serves their little chickenhawk candyasses right, doesn’t it?
That last sentence was sarcastic, OK? Would it then be fair to quote me as calling SeeDubya and the Anchoress “chickenhawk candyasses”? About as fair as it would be for me to quote Boehlert as saying this:

Biased American journalists, too cowardly to go get the bloody news in Iraq themselves, are relying on local news stringers who have obvious sympathies for insurgents. The result of the AP hoax? Americans have been duped into believing there is a civil war raging in Baghdad today.

(His words, not mine!)
Or am I being too obsessive about this? Actually, I think I’m being rather sloppy, because compared to the “warbloggers” Boehlert accuses of “poring over the AP’s dispatches, feverishly dissecting paragraphs in search of proof for their all-consuming conspiracy theory,” I’ve done very little. I don’t even think I’ve ever earned the title of warblogger, and that 101st fighting keyboardist logo thingie over there, yeah, I joined the group, but the truth is, I really don’t consider myself much of a “fighting keyboardist.” (Using my keyboard is often a fight in itself.) The truth is, while I support their cause, I don’t write much about the war. I mainly liked the logo.
Sometimes I wish I had the time to be, like, a really obsessive, frenzied warblogger, of the kind envisioned by Media Matters with titles like “RIGHT WING BLOGGER FRENZY ON BOEHLERT.” If I whipped myself into a frenzy, I might actually take the time to do the kind of digging — and it would take real digging — to find “Air Force Regulation 160-23.” Boehlert described it as a drug testing rule written in 1972, and speculated that it was a reason Bush failed to report for duty. I spent many hours trying to find the regulation he quoted, but came up dry.
The problem is that my failure to find Air Force Regulation 160-23 does not mean that it didn’t exist in 1972. And even if it could be shown not to have existed, under the same reasoning Boehlert advances now it would make no difference, because Bush avoided duty anyway, and those who argue against false facts are simply “bloggers for Bush” or something.
Damn, this is tedious, and much as I need a frenzy, I am unable to come up with one.
But maybe my failure to whip myself into a frenzy is a good thing.
I mean, much as I hate having to play devil’s advocate, suppose Boehlert is right? Suppose it makes no difference whether people or facts turn out to have been made up. Fake smoke, fake ambulance attacks, fake people, even fake regulations.
Wouldn’t it be a better world if reporters made up people and facts and no one cared? Why should anyone care?
Because, like, we all have our own realities, right? And doesn’t every reality depends on its own reality-based facts?
No matter how inconvenient they are, or how false they might be alleged to be, what we call “facts” have to be always be subordinated to greater truths.
UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post, and for quoting what I actually said!
Welcome all!
Glenn links Michelle Malkin who continues to search and dig, and continues to not find “Jamil Hussein.”
Searches for things that aren’t meant to be found tend to turn up nothing.
Sigh.
I guess sometimes nothing can be something.
MORE: My thanks to Jules Crittenden for linking this post.
UPDATE (01/07/07): I just got back from vacation, and I see that while I was away, the existence and identity of “Jamil Hussein” was established to the satisfaction of all who expressed skepticism. (New post here.)
Obviously, this means that I was wrong in calling Hussein a fictional character. I jumped to conclusions based upon my suspicions, and I retract my characterization of the AP as having made up his name.
Again, it is very difficult to prove that someone (or something) does not exist. The onus really should be on the people who assert that it does exist, and I’m at a loss to understand why it took six weeks for the AP to prove the existence of their source. It was their inability to do so for so long that led me to conclude they couldn’t.
I am of course someone who blogs from home, and I am in no position to know whether what I read is true or not. I need proof, and if it isn’t forthcoming, my skepticism grows.
While I should have hesitated before saying the AP made up Hussein, any such characterizations in a blog post are by their nature tentative. (Hell, for all I know, there still might be a “George Harleigh” — even though I’m 98% sure there isn’t.)
(Similarly, if Eric Boehlert can provide a link to the location of the language in the regulation he cites, I will retract my tentative conclusion that he made the regulation up.)


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20 responses to “my foam flecked frenzy over fictional facts”

  1. Tood Avatar
    Tood

    Well, for leftists, the ends justify the means no matter what. It took you this long to figure that out?
    The fun will start when, after succeeding in getting Muslims to dominate Western sociery, they attempt to force Muslims to be tolerant of gay marriage, abortion, feminism, etc.

  2. Clocker Avatar
    Clocker

    The generation now running and defending truthy AP were outsiders once, decades ago. They attacked certain leaders of American institutions – college presidents, military leaders and so forth – for using lies in the service of “greater truth”. Those institutional representatives responded with shock and dismay , for how could they be attacked when they were so important to America, when they were good people engaged in an important, just and vital battle. The response, correct then as now was: ends don’t justify the means. If you play the “lies in service of a greater truth” card then you’ve instantly conceded rot at the core of everything you’re about everything you’re doing.

  3. corvan Avatar
    corvan

    In this case though the media isn’t creating their own reality for themselves. They are imposing their reality on you every single time they feed you a story that isn’t true.
    And it’s not like this is something they do only occasionally (Hurricane Katrina, National Guard Memos, Jayson Blair, etc.)
    One might think that journalism isn’t really about telling the truth. It’s about creating the truth.

  4. Mwalimu Daudi Avatar
    Mwalimu Daudi

    If the case against the Iraq war is so strong (as Boehlert and others seem to believe it is), then why the constant stream of “fake but accurate” reporting and the ad hominem attacks against war supporters? Why do they feel the urge to “speak fiction to power”?

  5. syn Avatar
    syn

    Big Brother Propaganda.
    If it successfully worked for Joe Wilson it most certainly will work for Eric Boehlert.
    Question is, considering the Army of Davids dismal failure during the last election, will they be able to beat Big Brother?
    When the Army of Davids went after Republicans that was an easy target, now we’ll see just how much fire-power the Army of Davids will have against the almighty Big Brother. Nancy Pelosi will not be so kind as to let the Army of Davids anywhere near the her Big Brother media machine.
    Instapundit’s Army of David is losing the information war and the loss is greater than what is happening in Iraq.

  6. Mike Avatar
    Mike

    It doesn’t matter to the Left what the facts are . . . except when you’re talking about the justification for taking down Saddam Hussein. There, because the prewar information on WMD turned out to be wrong, the whole enterprise is tainted. Liberating the Iraqi people from a tyrant thereby becomes, not a blow for freedom, but a source of embarassment.
    (Look, it’s not like they’ve ever been consistent before.)

  7. TallDave Avatar

    People need to remember: this story was not started by warbloggers. It was started by our soldiers. You know, the people that people like Carroll abd Boehlert always claim to support in between calling them “ludicrous,” questioning their bravery, and running false stories that put their efforts in a bad light.
    The bloggers have just been doing the legwork for the concerns raised by our soldiers.

  8. DirtCrashr Avatar

    This is what “the reality based community” is relying upon for their science and beliefs, the “Fake But True” as presented by the Media, including Global Warming.

  9. Purple Avenger Avatar

    SITUATIONAL. ETHICS.

  10. Bill Faith Avatar

    Excerpted and linked at We’ll live in shame or go down in shame …

    The Phantom Press Corps Song

    Off we go,into the wild blue yonder,
    Climbing high, into the sun,
    Down we dive, spouting our lies from under
    At ’em boys, give ‘er the gun,
    We’ll live in shame, or go down in flames,
    Hey! Nothing can stop the phan-tom press corps. …

    Sorry. Fuzzy flashback.

  11. Vinny Vidivici Avatar
    Vinny Vidivici

    No, it isn’t just one article or exception-to-the-rule mistakes one should expect from time to time in coverage of a difficult beat.
    Perhaps I’d believe more of what the press was telling us about Iraq if they hadn’t started trashing the whole effort when the boys paused during a sandstorm on the way to Baghdad.
    Throughout 2004 and 2005, when the IMF and World Bank ranked Iraq the fastest-growing economy in the Middle East, through three elections and the formation of a democratic government, and throughout an ‘insurgency’ which failed to dislodge the Coalition and has since devolved into sectarian violence, the media message on Iraq was much like it is today — all hyperbole, all the time.
    To claim that the coverage hasn’t been selective and politically-compromised is to engage in the sort of denial war critics often accuse war supporters of doing.

  12. mrsizer Avatar

    I believe the philosophy is summed up as “never let the facts get in the way of the Truth”.
    I prefer “The truth shall set you free” myself.

  13. Jim Avatar

    Great post Eric!
    I’ve sent the link to some “doubting Thomas” acquaintences of mine here in the office. Let’s see how they respond…. I’m using them as Guinea Pigs to prove your point. I’m certain that one of them will react with the equivalent of his fingers-in-ears, going “la la la la la can’thearyou!”
    Such is the state of the left’s True Believers.
    Also, in that I’m kinda sorta back to the keyboard… a LONG OVERDUE welcome to the blogroll, sir!
    Respectfully,
    Jim
    Sloop New Dawn
    Galveston, TX

  14. drbold Avatar
    drbold

    Is this really a surprise? Can you say “Rigoberta Menchu”?

  15. Robert Schwartz Avatar
    Robert Schwartz

    Eric Raymond explains it all in Gramscian damage.

  16. Robert Schwartz Avatar
    Robert Schwartz

    Eric Raymond explains it all in Gramscian damage.

  17. Kerry Avatar

    Counterfeit reporting, like counterfeit money destroys confidence. But a more apt comparison is food poisoning. If you’ve ever gotten serious food poisoning from a restaurant, did you ever try the place a second time? Or even drive past it without stomach torsions and bowel twitches?

  18. db Avatar

    This post is ridiculous. Boehlert, and nobody else, believes it is “OK” (your word) to make up lies for the “larger truth.” Wait until it is proven that Hussein actually is a fabrication before you jump all over some imaginary straw men who defends this sort of business.

  19. MnZ Avatar
    MnZ

    db,
    You said, “Wait until it is proven that Hussein actually is a fabrication[.]”
    That is a very poorly thought out statement. In this case, it is virtually impossible to prove that Hussein is a fabrication unless the AP admits that Hussein was a fabrication. The US military, the Iraqi government, and bloggers have all pointed out problems with the AP story and requested the AP provide more evidence. Has the AP seriously answered these critics and provided hard evidence to support their stories? Clearly not.
    Is the AP stonewalling? I don’t know. If the AP is stonewalling, Boehlert’s defense of the AP only encourages them to continue stonewalling.

  20. db Avatar

    Michelle Malkin and others are going to Iraq to hunt for Hussein. What’s the point of making judgments before the investigation is even done? It seems disrespectful to her entire mission to already assume the outcome before she’s even started.