THE TRIUMPH OF POLITICAL PORNOGRAPHY IN THE LAND OF OZ

[Note: The following blog is by Wilfred McClay, a board member of Democracy Project and the SunTrust Bank Chair of Excellence in Humanities and professor of history at the University of Tennesse at Chattanooga.]

Whenever a cultural elite is on its way down, there is a Wizard of Oz moment, when the curtain is parted, and the stern claims of authority that have always been heeded in the past are revealed to be the empty, self-protective posturing of an old liar.

It’s been said, rightly, that in insisting upon the authenticity (or “accuracy”) of the forged documents in its possession, CBS is sacrificing truth and reputation for self-protection. But even such a massively costly strategy is risky, since the self-protection will hold only so long as there is no independent way of verifying the documents’ source. And now, with the emergence of Bill Burkett as the likely source, or conduit, for the very documents that formed the core of CBS News’s latest attack on President Bush, CBS is in danger of having sacrificed all three.

Others will follow up the political and legal implications of all this, including the relationship (if any) of Mr. Burkett to the DNC and the Kerry campaign. But I want to make a larger cultural point, about what this incident, and this presidential campaign, tell us about the parlous state of the Democratic party, and of mainstream American liberalism.

It is not just that CBS should have been more skeptical of Burkett, as a committed political activist who has a long and well-documented record of grievances against George Bush. It’s something far worse. With the addition of Burkett to the picture, we come face to face with the dismaying fact that Dan Rather and his colleagues, who sit at the pinnacle of the American liberal establishment, have been willing to embrace the word, and the world-picture, of a political lunatic. Anyone who doubts this characterization of Burkett, who proudly claims, among other things, to have been a consultant for Fahrenheit 9/11, should consult Prestopundit, which is all over this aspect of the story, and provides link after link to writings by and about Burkett, including articles appearing earlier this year in the New York Times and Boston Globe. Ace of Spades further confirms this picture of Burkett.

What we’re seeing is the bitter fruit of an unchecked taste for false but emotionally satisfying (and politically useful) extremism on the left. I won’t deny for a second that the right has sometimes been prone to the same thing, and may be in danger eventually of creating its own ideological echo chambers. But that is not where the problem is right now. When writers like New York Times columnist Paul Krugman made the claim that the mere factual inaccuracy of Fahrenheit does nothing to vitiate its “essential” truth---and he was but one of many to make similar endorsements---one caught a glimpse of a pathology that has plagued the Left for a long time now, from the “true lies” of Tawana Brawley (whose advocate, Al Sharpton, was a Democratic presidential candidate), to the wild accusations of Howard Dean, and now to the “fake but accurate” fabrications of CBS News.

In one sense, it is simply the latest change to be rung on the oldest of moral temptations, a willingness to say that the end justifies the means. But, as those of us who work in the academy know, the problem goes much deeper, to a comprehensive picture of the world in which the most delusionary visions of political reality enjoy a special indulgence.

Which is where the comparison of Michael Moore Politics to pornography seems to me entirely apposite. Reasonable people can differ about whether or not pornography is always and everywhere a vice. But no one can doubt that when men become addicted to it, to the point where it is not merely the indulgence of a harmless fantasy but a substitute for reality---indeed, regard it as in some sense, a “higher” reality, one more in tune with their deepest sense of their own justified “needs”---it is a debasing, coarsening, and debilitating thing, which renders its consumer pathetic, disoriented, and sometimes even dangerous. It is death to all genuine relationships with other people in the real world.

So with political pornography. It is death to genuine political debate, which is why the academic world, the San Fernando Valley of political pornography, and the most ideologically uniform example of “diversity” that the world has ever known, is so utterly moribund as a source of fresh ideas about the direction of this country.

I frankly doubt whether Dan Rather actually shares the perfervid vision of a Bill Burkett or a Michael Moore. But it may be worse, far worse, to play around with such things, and imply that they present a vision of things that is “true” in spite of its reliance on falsity and fakery. Such playing-around not only exploits people who are too immature or emotionally crippled to face reality. Even worse, it utterly cripples those elements of the democratic Left that are absolutely necessary to the restoration of a healthy political dialogue in this country. Perhaps the coming debacle of this presidential election, and the humiliation of CBS, will give those elements a chance to assert themselves, and end the reign of political pornography. Even confirmed right-wingers should hope for that.

Wilfred McClay