A decade ago I began as follows a post discussing what a New York Times headline referred to as the “Fake but Accurate” forged documents CBS News’s Dan Rather relied on in attacking George Bush:
Some of you will recall the controversy over I, Rigoberta Menchu, the purported autobiography of a radical Guatemalan woman that won a 1992 Nobel Prize. The revelation that it contained more fiction than fact generated quite a bit of heated controversy that was summarized nicely by John Leo in a widely read article on hate crime hoaxes. What was striking at the time, and remains striking, is how many professors and others who should know better defended Menchu and her book on the grounds that it spoke a larger truth, even if many of the alleged facts were manufactured to suit her purpose. (I’ve discussed this issue, and quoted Leo, here.) As Leo wrote,
when Rigoberta Menchu’s famous account of class and ethnic warfare in Guatemala was revealed to be largely false, many professors said this didn’t matter much because her book contained emotional truth. The blurring of the line between fact and fiction is far advanced in our university culture. Hoaxes are just one symptom of the truth problem.
I discussed the Rigoberta Menchu controversy in more detail here, quoting a horde of academics responding to the revelation that her autobiography was much more polemical fiction than fact with variations of the following typical comment:
“I think Rigoberta Menchu has been used by the right to negate the very important space that multiculturalism is providing in academia,” says Marjorie Agosin, head of the Spanish department at Wellesley College. “Whether her book is true or not, I don’t care. We should teach our students about the brutality of the Guatemalan military and the U.S. financing of it.”
Another typical response, from a “Professor of Spanish”:
Although I have many doubts concerning Rigoberta’s veracity, I am inclined to defend her status, since very little has been done to recognize minorities in this world…. [S]he deserves the recognition, even though her testimony may be somehow false. If her testimony is false, it, however, is based in true facts, for many of the events that she narrates, one can confirm it in any international news paper.
I have been reminded of Rigoberta Menchu by the response of many liberals to the recent revelations by the Dallas Morning News that many of the autobiographical facts put forward by Wendy Davis, Democratic candidate for governor made famous by her filibuster against legislation curbing late-term abortions, were, as the article gingerly put it, “blurred.”
What John Leo aptly termed the “truth problem” presented by these false narratives, in short, is still very much with us. Take a look, for example, at the defense of Davis recently offered by liberal journalist Margaret Carlson on Bloomberg News, “Wendy Davis’s Essential Truthiness.” Frankly admitting that she “may be soft on anyone who takes a good story and makes it better,” Carlson argues that, aside from a “timeline” Republicans found “wanting,” nevertheless “there [is] a truthiness to her telling of her life 30 years ago.”
The late Senator Patrick Moynihan famously described the lowering of standards as “defining deviancy down.” I think he would find the decline from truth to “truthiness” a perfect example, but there may be a bright side: if Carlson sues me for libel or defamation, she could hardly complain if my lawyer asserts “truthiness” as a defense.
The embrace of that book my the academic left is strange. They purport to use it to educate Americans about multiculturalism and oppression of minorities. Of course, what they really do is use it to educate white non-Hispanic Americans about why they should feel guilty. These professors of Spanish, moreover, certainly do not focus on the painful aspects of Latino oppression of minorities, slavery and racism. In fact, the very Latinos who oppressed Rigoberta claim to be “persons of color” in the USA, oppressed minorities, and in need of government assistance on par with African Americans!
LOL, nevermind the propoganda about the unity of people of color, or the fact that leftists are liars, like American academia.
Not a liar, per se, simply despicable in defense of the “the big lie”
“[Vice President of Vassar Catherine] Comins argues that men who are unjustly accused can sometimes gain from the experience. ‘They have a lot of pain, but it is not a pain that I would necessarily have spared them. I think it ideally initiates a process of self-exploration. ‘How do I see women?” “If I didn’t violate her, could I have?” “Do I have the potential to do to her what they say I did?” Those are good questions.’”
Apparently there is no reasonable expectation of a binding oath, a la “Search for truth”, for such special “academic” flowers. (amongst others)
Is Catherine Comins, and the defenders of her brand of “truthiness”, STILL in (or campaigning for) office of “public trust”?
At this point, what difference does it make?
“Composite” details of facts are for “the greater good”. How many repetitions of “artfully” constructed anecdotal outliers, with ZERO apparent fear of contempt consequences, does it take to make up an
“Well, EVERYONE just KNOWS…you…you…you… racist/sexist/omniphobe/chauvinist/violent/unenlightened/
unhyphenated oppressor!”