I present an analysis of the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear,” seeing the controversies around it as being about the status of fact and fiction in our politics, and making a call to action to DC readers.
I was enchanted by the idea of the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.” I have enjoyed Stewart’s and Colbert’s shows. Especially during the worst years of the Iraq war, I watched them to maintain my own sanity. In their rally, they accurately highlighted the strength of their satire, looking for sanity in insane times, using the form of the day, the great Washington Rally organized by cable television. I have principled problems with this new form of “Media Events,” but such is the world we now live in. Stewart and Colbert claimed that theirs wasn’t a response to the Glenn Beck organized event, but it clearly was. There is irony in their satire, which challenges political clarity but for good cultural reasons.
I was pleased by the turn out. It seems that more people attended the Stewart Colbert satirical event, than attended Beck’s earnest rally to restore honor. I appreciated that “we” saw ourselves as outnumbering “them,” and it felt good. But was there any more to it than that?
There indeed was concern in this regard. The ambiguity of the event’s meaning led to significant criticism after the fact, most vividly expressed in Bill Maher’s response.
The left and the right are not equally insane, the critics point out. The problem is not in the media portrayal of our politics, something that Colbert and especially Stewart seem to focus on, but the politics itself. The event energized a part of the public, but didn’t lead to specific political action. This, of course, just before the midterm elections which promised to lead to broad Democratic losses and Tea Party gains, and which proved to be the case. The only person to even allude to the elections was Tony Bennett in his closing performance, calling out to people “Vote!” after singing “America the Beautiful.” It was a political event about nothing according to Maher, echoes of Seinfeld here.
Stewart in his nightly show defended himself in amusing ways last night. His main point: the rally was about something, just not about what his critics wanted. He is mostly concerned not with the partisan disagreements, but that we have lost our ability to disagree civilly and constructively. His critics in turn wonder whether it is possible to constructively disagree when one side of the disagreement is acting in a fundamentally dishonest way. Assertions about death panels, the illegitimacy of the Obama Presidency because of his non – citizenship, wild claims about the dangers of Sharia law in Oklahoma, and the crime wave and voting fraud being perpetuated by illegal aliens, all coming from Republicans in engaging important debates of the day, do not have Democratic equivalents. How then can Stewart claim to be non-partisan? But we have to watch their tongues as they go into their cheeks.
The correlation between fact and party
This debate on the left, and the ambiguity of the event, I think, underscores a fundamental problem in our political culture. There is too clear a correlation between commitments to facts and party identification. One party is associated with facts, while the other seems to be more committed to its own fictions. Indeed, more disturbing than the disagreements about how to address the problems of climate change is that the scientific finding of global warming has somehow become a partisan issue. More unsettling than the disagreements about the details of TARP is the fact that there are those who seem to deny that there really were dangers of the collapse of the financial system and a global depression on the order of the Great Depression of the 1930s, and that government action was imperative. And though I have to accept that some are not as thrilled as I am by the fact that America has matured to the point that it has elected an extremely intelligent African American President, bi-racial, with Muslims in his family tree, it is deeply unsettling that there are those who live with the myths that he is somehow not really American, and that elected representatives of the Republican Party actually perpetrate these myths or do little to criticize them. One party has become the party of facts, the other of fictions. Truth shouldn’t be a partisan issue but it has become one, in many different instances.
Stewart and Colbert and their critics disagree about how to voice objection to this situation, and about their perceived roles. But they are responding to the same political cultural dilemma. How to fight against the fictions that Republican partisans are using to mobilize their constituencies so effectively? And the “fictoids” keep coming , the latest from Fox News – President Obama’s Asian trip is costing $200 million dollars a day, $2 billion for the whole trip, with 3,000 in his entourage, and 34 war ships providing protection, as Stewart was quick to ridicule, following his defense against his liberal critics in his program last night.
A modest suggestion
The Rally was of those who oppose such politics and such media, which lightly substitute such fictions for facts. The participants and their supporters, and their liberal critics, became visible in large numbers. And as I tried to argue in my last post, they, we, are going to have to organize ourselves to act not only against policies we disagree with, but also against the lies. As the Republicans obstruct responsible governance, I hope to see an alternative cast against the Tea Party mobilization. A key to this will be a commitment to truth, something to which the Rally, its participants and organizers contributed. And I have a suggestion for how we might start contributing to this cause at Deliberately Considered, by collecting and analyzing fictoids. The floor, or at least the blog, is open for contributions.
Hi Jeff,
Great stuff.
It would be of interest to you, too: Obama on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Yes, we can but!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MgWbX5ENKk
It seems Obama was a serious politician in a comedy show where he should play a role of comedian not of a politician. (Think of Sarah Palin on SNL!) That’s why the audiences burst out laughing. Jon Stewart, on the other hand, became a political figure in a political rally while he’s playing a role of comedian! The rally and the Obama incident seem to show the intersection of politics and the entertainment industry as a media event and a new dynamic of American media politics (Yes, We Can too, said the Tea Party Movements!)
I really like the “fictoid” suggestion. It might help take some of the noise out of what is broadcast and discussed. Political speak is full of “fictoids.” As Jeff points out, many “fictoids” are perceived as facts, and as the Thomas Theorem implies,” If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” Expose “fictoids” for what they are, and there will be different consequences.
How do we expose “fictoids?”
Frequently, “fictoids” seem credible because they are accepted and are taken for granted. In a minor part of Jeff’s example, Jeff references the Beck and Stewart/Colbert rally attendance estimates. CBS used an “expert” to challenge the accepted wisdom broadcast on other networks, most of which were based upon informal, off the record guesstimates by the National Parks Service. It is possible to research the expert’s methodology (AirPhotosLive.com, I believe), and make a judgment about it. Informal estimates don’t have this transparency, yet the repeated reference to them contributes to their credibility. Photographs of each event are available for anyone who wants to investigate them, but it is difficult for casual observers to analyze them. If a court hearing was held, dueling “experts” would probably be presented to contest the other side’s findings. Vetting “fictoids” can be a time consuming process.
The “expert” as a concept can be analyzed as a social type to use Simmel’s terminology. Part of what defines an “expert” is a belief that an “expert” has something special that distinguishes them from most other people. It usually involves claims about special training, skills, knowledge, and experience. If we go beyond these characteristics, it is possible to understand what goes into the making of an “expert”; help explain their influence; understand other aspects of their interactions; and the credential making and maintenance process. “Experts” are expected to suspend their preconceptions and biases, and offer opinions, based upon an objective analysis of a situation. An irony is that “experts” frequently disagree with one another. This makes it more difficult to form conclusions. The situation is made more complex in that “expert” advice is frequently part of a commercial arrangement.
A relatively modern challenge for the “expert” is transparency made by making situations public which frequently happens as large numbers of people contribute to discourse through the new media. While there is a lot of noise in the content of the new media, frequently, some insights are surfaced which have been overlooked by the “experts.”
I think what this suggests is the need to blend “expert” analysis with widely shared, analyzed and contested information. It is a messy process, but in the end, it should be possible to properly identify an assertion as either a fact or “fictoid.”
I want to underscore that I think the close relationship between news and entertainment generally poses a problem. Distinguishing between fact and fiction becomes difficult, but not impossible, maintaining dignity as a political leader is harder (as is revealed by the clip Jae brings to our attention). Expert analysis can help, as Michael suggests, but given that experts don’t always agree and the populist suspicion of elites, the help is limited. This is a struggle for public opinion and public appearance of those who can tell the difference between fact and fiction. Bringing this to the attention of the public is very important. Thus, I think it is an important public project to do this, which I think the Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear was about in amusing ways. Perhaps there is, though, a danger that we could amuse ourselves to death as fictoid machine of Beck and company chugs along.
I like your analysis of the “fictoid, and as you were, I was seriously disappointed at the albeit expected outcome of the ensuing election. I agree that Jon and Steven did not use the rally as politicians would have but they are not politicians:they are well-paid figureheads of television, a commercial enterprise that thrives on sponsorship by both sides of the political coin. They have to talk a line of pablum that entertains. The rally was good old American entertainment. Nothing more. I actually see Jon and Steven as “truthiness sayers”. The truthiness is just that–an entertaining way to tell the truth. Can truth be entertaining?
I believe that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are entertainers, not politicians, but they are political satirists, and they address serious issues of the day. Whatever the intent of the sponsors, the meaning of the rally was in the eye of the beholder, and the attendees could very well feel that they were making a political statement. “Truthiness,” which is a favorite word of the character Stephen Colbert plays on his show, is related to what Jeff is calling “fictoids,” a statement of truth that is not based on fact, or fact distorted beyond recognition of truth, “death panels,” etc. Jon Stewart in his interview with Rachel Maddow ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/11/rachel-maddow-jon-stewart-interview_n_782538.html ) says that both sides of the political aisle are guilty of this, but maintains that most of his ire is directed at the most egregious perpetrators who are found on the right and promoted and amplified by Fox News. I don’t believe Stewart and Colbert are engaged in “truthiness” as Anezka Sebek is saying, but rather are calling out those who are. They do this in funny ways, but often make you want to cry. I think that the people who went to the rally, or sympathized with it, did so to make a statement against the right-wing rallies of late, and also to have some fun and maintain their sanity in the present outrageous political atmosphere.
I am encouraged by seeing that the concept introduced in The Politics of Small Things, namely “living in truth,” has salience throughout this blog entry.
The Value of Fake News – The Daily Show: Stewart’s political satire in the form of “fake news” on his show is a compelling antidote to the distortions and the fictoids, and has fundamental value in a thinking society. It’s compelling because it reveals the incongruities in the fictoids, makes us laugh (a lot) so it appeals to our senses and intellect, and ultimately gets us to the truth behind the deceptions and controlled messages. And, regardless of one’s party affiliation or ideology, Stewart really spares no one. Everyone has an equal opportunity to get on his radar screen, and that also brings real value to a thinking society.
[…] is what our concern about fictoids is all about. Political actors imagine a reality. Sarah Palin makes up the notion of death panels […]
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