So, it’s April 1st. April Fools’ Day. I must admit, I’m feeling a bit like an April Fools’ Grinch. I’ve already been “gotcha’d” twice – once by a report of an Apple G5 with three processors, once by a report that there was another major announcement from the Mars rover team. Lord knows how much hokum I’ve swallowed whole from the blogosphere today. I guess my problem is that, given the level of discourse I encounter most days, given the slippage of ethics in journalism, given the inability of most people to spot logical fallacies and other rhetorical blunders, and given that I’ve pretty much come to depend on comedy news shows and newspaper satires to deliver the kind of insightful news commentary I once depended on the real world to provide, at this point it’s really hard to distinguish April Fools’ Day from the rest of the year.

What is an April Fools’ joke supposed to be, anyway? It can be a simple dime store gag, I suppose, like a joy buzzer or a pen that squirts disappearing ink. However, when I think of the classic fools I’ve encountered, I think of TV news reports like the spaghetti-growing bushes of Italy, or the farm that raises branchless trees for use as telephone poles. I think of any number of newspaper and magazine satires that were so well written that I really needed to check the date and the byline closely for clues that it was a joke.

A joke is a surprise on the mind. It’s like a head fake on the basketball court, getting you to move your mind one way while the joke goes the other. Laughter is the delightful recognition of the skill of the joke teller. I think we laugh at jokes because we recognize their fundamental truth, and the fundamental truth is that our conscious experience is not so linear or predictable as we’d like to believe. Meaning bifurcates, recurses, twists itself into a Gordian Knot. It is only through our conscious efforts that we construct a livable reality based on common perceptions, one which allows us to participate in a society.

But it seems to me that too much of what I encounter these days online, in the media, and from the political arena is like a bad joke. Our administration lies to justify a war, then denies that it lied, even in the face of proof. Journalists like Jayson Blair and Jack Kelley make up stories out of whole cloth. Members of the administration, who have continued to promote their handling of the 9/11 crisis as evidence of brave and capable leadership, refuse to testify before the 9/11 Committee, or agree only under bizarre conditions. Fox News calls itself “Fair and Balanced.” Wolf Blitzer insinuates that Richard Clarke’s personal life is “weird.” CNN lies that David Letterman doctored a video.

When challenged, the common defense these days is to attack the challenger, to question the perception of truth, or to further obfuscate details of the original event. The defenders turn the question on its head and pretend that, no, the challengers must be the ones that are mistaken. Like joke-tellers, they try to fake us one way and move the other. They depend on our innate understanding that meaning is fungible to maintain their veneer of infallibility. They thwart our attempts to straighten out the tangled threads of truth, to divine reason from bullshit, to construct a foundation of common perception that might provide a platform for social maturity. Through blinkered self-interest, those who wish to maintain their power weaken us all.

What is increasingly apparent in modern public discourse, is that there are certain powerful interests whose disdain for truth and accountability boggles the mind. It’s not too much to say that this behavior is anti-social and culturally destructive. Lack of accountability to the truth is hurting our ability to function as a society because it is undermining the trust in the people and institutions we depend on to inform us and keep us safe.

I’m no Cassandra. I’m actually optimistic that bloggers and others in the online community are finding a way to fight back, to hold people accountable and to highlight issues that might otherwise be glossed over. But watching the culture of distortion become increasingly transparent lately has left me with a hole in my heart that just isn’t somehow patched over by making a good joke. Where’s the fun in writing an Aprili Fools satire when the people in the institutions I look up to do a much better job of satirizing themselves on a daily basis?

Ah, hell. I’ll just go read The Onion and get over it.

Happy April Fools, y’all.

• No Related Post

Thursday, April 1st, 2004 @ 1:05 pm Rants
RSS 2.0 Both comments and pings are currently closed.