FRANK RICH'S "PERSON OF THE YEAR" AND THE DECADE OF DECEPTION

In his regular NY Times, Sunday column, Frank Rich, (December 20, 2009) says fair well to a dreadful year and a horrible decade (a questionable election, 9-11, two unnecessary wars, and a great depression) by discrediting Time Magazine’s choice of Ben Bernanke as “Person of the Year”. According to Rich, the journal's choice of Bernanke was dishonest, and all too typical of the “flight from truth” syndrome which has infected our nation over the last decade. To underscore this national “bend the truth” tendency of the first decade of this century, Frank Rich enrolled his own candidate: four-time US Master's champion-golfer, Tiger Woods as his “Person of the Year”. Who could better represent the decade of deception? Tiger, whose golf and endorsement success was based on his superb mastery of the long drive, followed by a short-iron recovery shot close to the pin from the even the deepest rough, has seen his popularity plummet recently from 85% to 35% due to the explosive press coverage exposing a "Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" personality. So who could better typify the “decade of deception” than Woods, the first “billion dollar” athlete, who so successfully manipulated his public image- one of a steel-willed, well-disciplined happily-married, privacy-loving "every-man"athlete, as he lived out his secret “wild-life” behind his fortified façade.

According to Frank Rich, awarding, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke as Time’s ‘Person of the Year, 2009’ was only another example of gross media deception. Awarded since 1927 (Charles Lindbergh was their first) the famous national journal has honored some of the world's true greats--but according to Rich, this year's award went to a “schnook” who foolishly kept the economic mixer whipping at high speed as the economy went into a froth---then did nothing, as economy collapsed like a hot soufflé in a cold breeze. (See http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1946375_1947251,00.html). Since Bernanke’s primary function as Chairman of the Fed was to prevent economic "over exuberance" and financial bubbles, he is a most undeserving honoree, who failed at his primary function. Would they have put Lindberg on the cover if he had ditched in the Atlanic? No! Rather than acting as the nation’s financial guardian, Bernanke took on the role of facilitator of Wall Street’s excesses. (See: “You Ben are the Moral Hazard” by Senator Jim Bunning).

Mr. Rich’s insightful argument is that Time’s hypocritical choice was just another example among many during this last decade of how the media, the government and even private citizens misrepresent facts, bent the truth and lied to the public. One wonders, did Rich have President Obama's Nobel Prize committee in his sights too?

If Time was ready to "bamboozle” the public with the hypocrisy of installing Bernanke as a "Person of the Year". Frank Rich was ready to install Tiger Woods--a man whose personal life and public persona are so obviously, nay bizarrely incongruent, as to underscore the blatant hypocrisy in public discourse over this last decade. Rich’s well-written piece tabulates for us the many ways we have been deceived by our government, the electronic and other media.

"If there’s been a consistent narrative to this year and every other in this decade, it’s that most of us, Bernanke included, have been so easily bamboozled. The men who played us for suckers, whether at Citigroup or Fannie Mae, at the White House or Ted Haggard’s megachurch, are the real movers and shakers of this century’s history so far. That’s why the obvious person of the year is Tiger Woods. His sham beatific image, questioned by almost no one until it collapsed, is nothing if not the farcical reductio ad absurdum of the decade’s flimflams, from the cancerous (the subprime mortgage) to the inane (balloon boy)." .......As cons go, Woods’s fraudulent image as an immaculate exemplar of superhuman steeliness is benign. His fall will damage his family, closest friends, Accenture and the golf industry much more than the rest of us. But the syndrome it epitomizes is not harmless. We keep being fooled by leaders in all sectors of American life, over and over. A decade that began with the “reality” television craze exemplified by “American Idol” and “Survivor” — both blissfully devoid of any reality whatsoever — spiraled into a wholesale flight from truth".Frank Rich, NY Times, December 20, 2009.

That "flight from truth" over the last decade included the lies about Saddam Hussein and his supposed weapons of mass destruction, as well as the non-existent ties to Al Qaidia, lies about non-existing Niger derived yellow-cake, as well as lies about those who attempted to expose lies like Ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife.

Rich reminds of us of all those who bamboozled us over the decade from Barry Bonds who did not use steroids (yeah sure!) and the slippery John Edwards who did not father a baby, to the epitome of deception Bernie Madoff, as well as mere "associates in deception" Karl Rove, Elliott Spitzer, and “family-man” Larry Craig (of the wandering foot in public bathrooms), and don't forget financial huckster Ken Lay (of Enron fame), and many others.

Rich concludes that one of President Obama's problems is that..."... after a decade of being spun silly, Americans can’t be blamed for being cynical about any leader trying to sell anything. As we say goodbye to the year of Tiger Woods, it is the country, sad to say, that is left mired in a sand trap with no obvious way out."

Mr Rich puts the question out there so elegantly and I admire him for his insight. But it makes me wonder. How can these hucksters be so successful? And why are Americans so subject to hucksterism? Why are we so gullible is the underlying question? I believe most of our local charlatans, flim-flamers, bamboozlers, and Wizards of Oz, hidden behind their screens would be exposed elsewhere in the world. Are we so badly educated, so simple, so believing we can not tell a snake-oil salesman from a sincere Senator?

One reason may be that there are too few Mr. Frank Richs (Krugmans, Dowds, and a few others) and too many Judith Millers in our press corps. The press simply is too well “imbedded” in our military , government and business to any longer truly serve its true function as guardian of truth. Then too, there are too few independent sources of information.

A passing survey of the news organs of record indicate how little difference exists among them. The same story makes the rounds, but they repeat the same facts and come to the same conclusions. Rather than raising ones questioning antennae some readers may find that similarity very reassuring. Here in America, there is simply a lack of alternate information. Yes, the Internet is available and may well address that shortcoming, but with far too few exceptions Americans do not get their news there, read foreign languages, and so foreign press is not a useful source, and if they did, they probably would not believe them.

Media consolidation which reached a crescendo in the late 1990s eliminated many independent news outlets. Today, most newspapers are owned by a few large companies. These large institutions have a stake in the status quo. In regard to the electronic media, valuable broadcast licenses and broadcast wavelengths are doled out by the government...which can withhold or terminate a licensee. That potential threat may limit what stories editors and station managers may permit to be aired. Then all too often--as we saw so clearly during the run up to the Iraq invasion of 2003, the established media (such as Frank Rich's employer-- the NY Times) become the propaganda arm of the government. Recall NY Times reporter Judith Miller and her pro-war reports sourced from (and prepared for her by) insiders in the Bush-Cheney White House. One would think that she should have been ostracized, yet she is back on the airwaves...on Fox News.

Modern education is partly to blame for our inability to spot a liar. It tends toward rote-learning, technological subjects, superficial summaries and subjectivism, rather than emphasis on developing analytical skills and critical thinking. But what can you expect from a nation which as recently as 2004 (by a Gallup Poll) revealed that 45% of the population held the mid-Nineteenth century ideas that the earth and man were created a mere 10,000 years ago in a form that is just as they appear today.

Then too the pernicious belief in an American exceptionalism, tends to increase our susceptibility to a flimflam. Though this may be more a the result of the preceding list rather than a itself a cause, the pervasive and pernicious idea that America is somehow "different" (and superior) than other nations is all too prevalent in our thinking. America sees itself as the only virtuous nation in a frightening world of tyrants and evil doers beyond the seas...oh with perhaps a very few exceptions...such as Israel and Great Britain. Thus, the general perception is that we are good, and they out there are bad. As a result, what our "good" government tells us is more likely to be valid, true and believable (and is more comforting and reassuring as well) while the pronouncements of foreigners---were we to understand their unintelligible languages anyway--is suspect. Our weakness is that too many Americans see themselves as living within an "island nation" surrounded by treacherous and alien cultures.

Finally, our susceptibility to deception may stem from simple mentally sloth. It takes effort to dig for facts, do research, question our leaders statements, and study. Most Americans are simply too busy, too well-fed, well-entertained and coddled to care. Here within the "island nation" we have few real threats, whatever former VP Cheney and Rush Limbaugh say. Were we really concerned, and were the outside world truly threatening, we would be forced into learning more about world geography, more foreign languages, and more about other cultures. Furthermore, the absence of these interests and concerns in our population belies the threatening nature of the world beyond our shores. If it were really threatened we would be more interested out of necessity.

On a visit to Salamanca, Spain, many years ago, to visit my daughter who was there as a Spanish language student, I met her roommate, a young Lebanese woman. This young woman's native language was Arabic, and as with almost everyone in Lebanon, she was also fluent in French and English. I also learned that she spoke both Turkish and Hebrew, and like my daughter, was at that time learning Spanish. When I asked her how she came to be such a linguist, she explained that she was no different than many in her country, where multilingualism was common. She had traveled around Europe a good deal as a student and she had learned English that way. French was really the second language of her homeland. "But what about Hebrew...are you Jewish?" I asked. "No, no, I am an Armenian Catholic", she said, with a flashing smile, then added with a sly wink, "But you know, as a minority, you must always know the language of your enemies and also of your friends. It is only for your own survival."

So this last decade of deception and disaster, these years of the "flight from truth" must end, for our nation to pull out of the political, financial and military difficulties we find ourselves in. But we would be wrong to place too much blame on the deceptive mass media, the perfidious George Bush and his ilk, the cardboard-imaged Tiger Woods, or the evil Bernie Madoffs, and duplicitous Ben Bernankes. These sorts will always be with us. We are the ones who have been hoodwinked, flimflammed, bamboozled and deceived and we must change to find our way successfully out of that fairway sand trap. We certainly can not afford another decade like the last. We must do better, think better, educate better, question more, learn more-- and trust less. We as a nation are better than being the butt, the target, and the mark of grasping charlatans.


Get the picture?


rjk