More on Truth
Sir Frederick
By Lowell Ponte
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 16, 2003
PONTEFICATIONS
THE CLINTONS WERE OUR FIRST PoMo PRESIDENCY, and their legacy is an increasingly Post-Modernist,
Deconstructed America in which fact and fiction, truth and lie, honesty and dishonesty, right and
wrong, good and evil are deliberately fuzzed, blurred and rendered irrelevant.
In truth, one of the only three statements for which President Bill Clinton will be remembered in
the books of quotations is his lawyerly sophism: “It all depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.”
Without ever giving the Clintons their due for this cultural and moral vandalism, the Arts and
Culture Critic of the San Francisco Chronicle recently celebrated an America in which
black-and-white moral, ethical and aesthetic distinctions have faded to gray.
“This, after all, is a culture that has come to accept and even expect skewed information at best,
outright lies at worst, in everything from government to advertising to art,” wrote Steven Winn.
“A generation after Watergate and Vietnam, scandals that made truth a casualty have lost their
power to scandalize. We live in a society of widespread duplicity and deceit.”
Hillary Clinton’s new book, which sells fiction and half-truths as non-fiction, is a case in point.
But evidence now suggests that even the marketing of her book entails Clintonesque dishonesty.
In an internal memo at her publisher Simon & Schuster, reports The American Prowler, one editor
describes the mysterious leak of some of the book’s most sensational passages: “That was really to
jump-start the sales. It’s a tried and true technique.”
Trouble is, Time Magazine had paid a fortune for exclusive first rights to publish such Hillary
excerpts, expecting this to boost its newsstand sales. According to Matt Drudge, Time editors
debated whether to scrap its planned Hillary cover and excerpts after the Associated Press did a
wire story quoting the book’s hottest tidbits.
Associated Press was in turn accused of violating Hillary Clinton’s copyright in the Wall Street
Journal. AP competitor Reuters did a story about how the Associated Press had “spoiled” the
promotion of Hillary’s book by giving away the choicest filet of the book to readers for free.
But if Simon & Schuster itself leaked the excerpts, as the Prowler’s reported memo comes close to
saying, then Hillary and/or her publisher gave away to AP an exclusive right that had already been
sold to Time Magazine. I am not a lawyer, but to me this looks suspiciously similar to civil
and/or criminal fraud.
Not illegal but certainly dishonest is additional information obtained from “deep inside the mighty
publishing house” by former literary agent and now the brains behind Lucianne.com, Lucianne
Goldberg.
“No way would we publish a million copies of anything,” this executive told her about what this
publishing house was telling the press. “It’s only necessary to say we did. Besides, where would we
put them?” Simon & Schuster had told reporters that the giant printing of Hillary’s book was
safeguarded in a secret “warehouse in New Jersey.”
Did Hillary’s book sell 200,000 copies on its first day of publication? “There is no possible way
for us to know that,” the executive told Lucianne. But Simon & Schuster told reporters that Hillary
had shattered the one-day record for such book sales.
According to the internal memo obtained by the Prowler, Hillary’s fans – like those going to the
opening of a blockbuster movie – have gotten their copies of her book and will not be buying more.
She needs to sell at least two million hardback copies to justify the $8 million promised. Even if
all the hype is true, Hillary over the next three months of promotion tour and diminishing sales
must try to climb the remaining 90 percent of the mountain, to sell another 1.8 million hardcover
books.
“Deception is so pervasive today it almost feels authentic to us,” writes Winn. “Lies, from the
skillfully subtle to the blatantly stage-managed, flow around us all the time. We co-opt them by
going along and trying to unpack the deeper truths inside.”
“Unpack” is one of those vague magical words of Deconstructionism. The ancient Greeks called it
Sophistry, a use of philosophical word-bending whose practitioners are able to argue convincingly
that up is down, left is right, white is black as adroitly as any wizard of double talk in the
Bureaucracy of Historical Revisionism in George Orwell University, (founded 1984).
At the heart of such thinking is the assumption that no objective truth exists. Every statement or
belief by everybody is the product of cultural, political, racial and other prejudices. Any
statement can be “deconstructed” or “unpacked” to expose these biases and thereby invalidate the
statement.
By such lights, Hillary and Bill Clinton cannot be called liars because nobody else has a superior
position of objective truth from which to judge them. It’s pseudo-Einsteinian relativity,
transported from physics to the realms of culture, morality and politics.
(Oddly, however, these Post-Modernists usually hold two kinds of thinking exempt from being
challenged by deconstruction – Marxist Political Correctness, and Post-Modernism.)
“Perhaps, in a postmodern world that is increasingly comfortable with irony, ambiguity, relativism
and doubt,” wrote Winn, “we simply no longer believe it’s possible to distinguish fiction
definitively from fact, lies from truth.” Hey, that has been true in the
better-living-through-chemistry Duchy of San Francisco since the 1960s.
The perfect embodiment of such moral relativism is Bill Clinton’s twisting, under oath, of what
“the meaning of ‘is’ is.” Close behind are the “Matrix” movies about people living in a virtual
reality generated by a ruling computer.
“’Matrix’ madness, in all its giddy science fiction exurberance,” wrote Winn, “reflects a genuine
uncertainty about the verifiable meaning of almost anything.”
But if nothing can be believed, then nothing can be valued, fought for, died for. And as the movie
“The Matrix” itself taught, the body cannot live without the mind. If you believe in the voodoo
illusion that you just plunged to your death from atop a burning World Trade Center tower, that
belief in the computer-generated illusion will kill you.
(Congress agrees. It recently outlawed possession of pornography based entirely on fiction, on
images generated entirely inside computers.)
Likewise, a society that ceases to believe it has anything to live for will weaken, lose its will,
and die. And this apparently is the real aim of those on university campuses and politics who
promote Post-Modernism and Deconstructionism.
“Each new revelation – whether it’s insider trading, the pedophilia cover-up in the Roman Catholic
Church, the bald-faced lies of tobacco company executives under oath or the latest cases of
plagiarism by some respected scholar – only confirms a cynical view,” wrote Winn, “that nothing can
be taken as reliable or valid.”
But the goal of Leftists such as Bill and Hillary Clinton is to “deconstruct” the West, capitalism,
private property, individualism, and any system of belief such as religion that might impede the
transfer of total power over all things and people to the government. To achieve this in a morally
disarmed society, they need not propose or win support for alternatives. All they need to do is
tear our old-fashioned values, institutions and rights down.
“All art, in a sense, is a lie,” wrote Winn, “a complex fabrication of illusions, symbols and
signifiers that creates an alternate reality. For centuries before the notion of authorship and
individual creation took hold, that enterprise was a collective one. Artists told each other’s
stories, completed paintings sketched by a master or mimicked another musician’s tunes.”
Yes, and Hillary had four ghost writers produce the book for which she now grabs the credit and
money. But it is a work of art, or more accurately of artifice. Hillary gives us not veracity but
verisimilitude, the illusion of a politically correct world in which “it takes a village to raise a
child” and “if [convicted cop killer and Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson] Mandela can forgive, I
can.”
“This is not a pipe,” wrote surrealist artist Rene Magritte at the bottom of his most famous
painting. Why? Because above the words was not a pipe but his depiction of a pipe. A picture of
something is not the thing itself. This proto-existential insight became inspiration for a book by
one of the founding fathers of Post-Modern thought, philosopher Michel Foucault.
Hillary and Bill Clinton are neither saints nor martyrs nor even minimally decent or honorable
human beings . . . despite leftist media efforts to depict them as such. They are not a pipe.
No wonder that a recent survey by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center
found that the belief that “most people can be trusted” – shared by 53 percent of Americans in 1964
– is today in the wake of eight years of Clinton rule, hypocrisy, and dishonesty a view shared by
only 35 percent of us.
The Clinton legacy has been the deconstruction of our trust in government, business, our media
watchdogs and one another. They have also destroyed one of America’s two major political parties,
with former Democratic National Committee co-chair Steve Grossman proclaiming Bill Clinton “the
most moral politician I have ever known.”
In Grossman’s deconstruction of reality, all that matters is “public morality,” i.e., did a
politician advance the cause of socialism. Bill Clinton did so. His “personal morality” – whether
he lied, cheated, stole, transferred U.S. missile secrets to Communist China in exchange for
millions in cash, or demanded the sacrifice of an occasional virgin to his predatory lusts – is
entirely irrelevant in this Democratic Party hierarchy of leftist values.
In an earlier era the notion that a politician could be personally filthy and corrupt but publicly
virtuous and an exemplar for our children would have seemed absurd.
But America has been changed by the Clintons, perhaps forever. Millions of us now live in a
post-truth, post-virtue, whatever-obtains society in which all that matters is whether something
feels good and, by hook or crook, gains power. Might makes right. Winning trumps fair play and all
other past virtues.
And millions of our children now hear the Clinton message: “Don’t be suckers and play by the rules.
Look at us. We broke every old rule of decency, and we’re winners. We’re millionaires. We’re
celebrities. Cheating pays. Be like us.” This is the corrosive Clinton legacy, and unless
repudiated it will deconstruct and demolish America.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Ponte hosts national radio talk show Monday through Friday Noon-2 PM Eastern Time (9-11 AM
Pacific Time) as well as on Saturdays 6-9 PM Eastern Time (3-6 PM Pacific Time) and on Sundays 9
PM-Midnight Eastern Time (6-9 PM Pacific Time) on the Talk America network . Internet Audio
worldwide is at TalkAmerica.com. The show's live call-in number is (888) 822-8255. A professional
speaker, he is a former Roving Editor for Reader's Digest.
tomca...@yanospamhoo.com
> THE CLINTONS WERE OUR FIRST PoMo PRESIDENCY, and their legacy is an
> increasingly Post-Modernist, Deconstructed America in which fact and
> fiction, truth and lie, honesty and dishonesty, right and
> wrong, good and evil are deliberately fuzzed, blurred and rendered
> irrelevant.
What exactly does Post-Modernist mean? I thought Reagan was our first
Post-Modernist President ...
Immortalist
<tomca...@yaNOSPAMhoo.com> wrote in message
news:bcq20f$es0$3...@news1.radix.net...
I liked how some described post-modernism when it was first coming out: post
machine mind set in art and life.
service sector [servicism] -but the meaning now is convoluted greatly.
Miller
"Sir Frederick" <mmcn...@fuzzysys.com> wrote in message
news:3EEFEE52...@fuzzysys.com...
like those going to the
cover-up in the Roman Catholic
> Church, the bald-faced lies of tobacco company executives under oath or
the latest cases of
percent of Americans in 1964
dishonesty a view shared by
> only 35 percent of us.
>
> The Clinton legacy has been the deconstruction of our trust in government,
business, our media
> watchdogs and one another. They have also destroyed one of America's two
major political parties,
> with former Democratic National Committee co-chair Steve Grossman
proclaiming Bill Clinton "the
> most moral politician I have ever known."
>
> In Grossman's deconstruction of reality, all that matters is "public
morality," i.e., did a
> politician advance the cause of socialism. Bill Clinton did so. His
> he lied, cheated, stole, transferred U.S. missile secrets to Communist
China in exchange for
> millions in cash, or demanded the sacrifice of an occasional virgin to his
Your stories are getting way, way too long, Freddie.
Scott
Miller
"Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:vf1caj4...@corp.supernews.com...
Generally used by conservatives to white-wash liberals.
Scott
alan jones
> “Lies, from the skillfully subtle to the blatantly stage-managed, flow around us
> all the time. We co-opt them by going along and trying to unpack the deeper
> truths inside.”
>
> “Unpack” is one of those vague magical words of Deconstructionism. The ancient
> Greeks called it Sophistry, a use of philosophical word-bending whose practitioners
> are able to argue convincingly that up is down, left is right, white is black as adroitly
> as any wizard of double talk in the Bureaucracy of Historical Revisionism in George
> Orwell University, (founded 1984).
>
> At the heart of such thinking is the assumption that no objective truth exists. Every
> statement or belief by everybody is the product of cultural, political, racial and other
> prejudices. Any statement can be “deconstructed” or “unpacked” to expose these
> biases and thereby invalidate the statement.
This it seems to me is the meat of this article.... not the politicking of the
Demos verses the Repos.;-/
Whilst it may seem foolish to those already reading between the lines,
I think an element of deconstruction might reveal the article, as making
known a contradictory critique of deconstructionlism.
If one take the surface of this article as the truth, then this description of
Deconctructionalism as Sophistry, demotes the act of deconstruction as
another form of lie, as mere 'word-bending'. The article starts with the
notion that we live in a time where lies are common place, common to
the point where it requires an element of 'Unpacking' to discover truth.
If we assumes the lies bartered in our times, equals those received from
bygone ages, then this attitude of deconstruction makes perfect sense. The
relationship we hold to the truth is as constant as human nature. Nothing
new, nothing so modern. It makes sense for anyone concerned with truth,
to hold the attitude that looks to deconstruct what we take on appearance;
or received in our time as truth. This is particular the case when one looks
to act upon the truths passed.
An idea of the 'intention' of a given piece of literature, not just how we
interpret it in our time, but an idea for the times in which it was conceived
and the forthright of it author given his times. (Applied here to the author
of this article.)
In our time Sophistry has a negative connotation ,owing must to our
impression of the 'act' of sophistry, and disregarding the 'intention' of.
It is hoped this act of Sophistry will be better received.......
"Sir Frederick" <mmcn...@fuzzysys.com> wrote in message news:3EEFEE52...@fuzzysys.com...
Russ Rose
"Miller" <chumley7...@chartermi.net> wrote in message
news:vf1ro54...@corp.supernews.com...
"White-wash" or white-water? ;-)
>
> Scott
>
>
Wordsmith
You're right. *yawn* At least my tales don't go beyond the bounds of
dramatic necessity.
Wordsmith :)
tellurian girl
It's a pop-term for the French facet of epistemological nihilism
that's pervaded the globe; i.e., cultural relativism,
anti-Enlightenment, anti-foundationalism, deconstructionism, etc.
Or as Richard Rorty puts it: "...truth is what your contemporaries let
you get away with" and "...no area of culture, and no period of
history, gets Reality more right than any other".
^v^v^ Usha
Immortalist
"Russ Rose" <russ...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1y9Ia.68365$YZ2.233856@rwcrnsc53...
gate; water gate
fits because both sides are *correct?*
things only become dangerous when either degrade
psuad-balancing-institutions of constitutional liberalism and democracy such
as justice or economic behavior.
like the regulatory institution of inheritance tax; to remove it's
counter-force completely is to move into dangerous waters
we exist in a network of institution some favorable to one side and some to
the other. to remove or enter new nodes into the networks changes more than
media opinions.
> >
> > Scott
> >
> >
>
>
Miller
"Wordsmith" <word...@rocketmail.com> wrote in message
news:cddcc385.03061...@posting.google.com...
I do appreciate the effort though. 'Course I know he just cuts and pastes
all this stuff anyway...
Scott