CSotD: Pilate Program
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David Horsey leads off today, and I hate to go to the same cartoonists so often, not for my own creative purposes but because, well, I hope you're giving them some clicks and support and we'll get back to that in a minute.
But let me frame this as a Juxtaposition …
… by bringing in Pat Bagley, who, on Facebook, titled this cartoon "Father of Lies and His Kid," because I'm wondering at what level either Donald is actively "lying," in the sense of knowing the truth and deliberately saying otherwise.
"What is truth?" is taken from John 18:38 and, when quoted, generally describes a weaselly way of avoiding responsibility, either directly, as when Pilate washes his hands and lets the Jews take responsibility for the crucifixion, or simply in the actual weasel sense of "on the one hand and yet on the other."
I've got my doubts about ol' John 18 as being contemporaneous rather than a later "improvement" to the history, but never mind that. More important is the dubious assertion that we can't really know what truth is.
Skepticism is an ugly thing when it is used, not in the sense of keeping an open mind, but, rather, as an excuse to avoid making a firm choice, or, in a related misuse, as a more flattering way to describe willful ignorance.
In the essay accompanying his cartoon, Horsey gets into the topic of truth:
It is no surprise the Trump family keeps running afoul of the rules of politics and government. After all, they have lived and thrived in a very different milieu — the world of New York City real estate.
In that world, it is perfectly normal to say things like, “Don’t worry, we’ll pay you for your work,” even if you don’t mean it. Or to say, “Trump Tower is 68 stories tall,” even though it rises to only 58. Or to promise, “You’ll get a great business education for your money,” even though you are pitching the bogus Trump University.
And he's right, with an asterisk.
I thought of Whitewater yesterday, because I was reading a Washington Post article about the difficulty that attorneys are having in dealing with the current brouhaha, and it included this passage:
The lawyers are now faced with the challenge of trying to force change on Trump, 71, who throughout his life has often thrived amid freewheeling chaos. He made his name as a flamboyant Manhattan developer, trafficking in hyperbole and mistruth — or “puffery,” as one former aide put it — while exhibiting little discretion in his daily conversations.
It's an excellent piece overall, but it contained a ping! that made my Spidey senses tingle.
Back in the 90s, we had endless articles about how terrible Whitewater was, but few of them specified anything. They talked about dishonesty, loans, interference, undue influence, and even fraud, but they never got around to saying what the hell had actually gone down.
Then, finally, Time Magazine laid it out and anyone familiar with commercial real estate said, "That's it?"
It seems that nobody had ever assigned a business reporter to what was, in all aspects, a business story: The Clintons were politicians, so it was a political story to be covered by political reporters.
By which logic they should have assigned sports reporters to OJ Simpson's murder trial.
What everyone was so horrified over was simply how commercial real estate deals happen.
Residential real estate is heavily regulated because of the imbalance in experience between Realtors and homebuyers, but it is assumed that both parties in a commercial transaction are capable of protecting themselves and so there are basically no rules.
Except that there are, and that's where Horsey's asterisk and the ping! come in.
When the WashPost reporter writes "trafficking in hyperbole and mistruth — or “puffery,” as one former aide put it," he might as well have said, "the batter hit the ball so far that he was able to run all the way around the bases — 'a home run' as one former teammate put it."
He put it that way because that's what it's called.
"Puffery" is a legal term that you learn in the first meeting of any Contracts or Biz Law class, and here — straight from the Business Dictionary — is the definition:
Advertising or sales presentation relying on exaggerations, opinions, and superlatives, with little or no credible evidence to support its vague claims. Puffery may be tolerated to an extent so long as it does not amount to misrepresentation (false claim of possessing certain positive attributes or of not possessing certain negative attributes).
Horsey's asterisk is that, while it is perfectly normal to say the things he lists, some of them are incidental puffery, while others are lies that could create legal repercussions. "You'll get a great education" is puffery, while "68 stories" must be accurate.
Which is not to say that newsrooms should turn all Trump coverage over to the business department.
But whoever is covering the family should view them, as Horsey suggests, through that filter and maybe have lunch once in awhile with a biz writer.
Now, about those clicks
Bad news from Houston yesterday: Nick Anderson has been dumped by the Chronicle.
I'd say "Hard to believe" but it isn't. The newspaper industry has, for the past quarter century, made one inexplicably self-destructive, idiotic decision after another.
As Nick noted, his on-line presence is huge and has sent massive traffic to the Chron. I don't know his level of mobility, but it would be cool if some little paper would give him a spot in the corner of the newsroom and some health insurance in return for which he could blow up their web traffic.
And I hope he starts a Patreon. I'll let you know if I hear of it.
Meanwhile, clicks and visits to these talented folks matter. Please exploit the links here and watch for Patreons, books and other ways of keeping them going.
(Cartoonists: If you have a link that does you more good
than another, let me know.)
And now this:
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