Truth

I've been watching the Palin interviews, and it is amazing to me how she continues to repeat certain aspects of her narrative despite all evidence to the contrary. The whole "And on that bridge to Alaska, I said 'Thanks, but no thanks.'" And there are like 5,000 difference sources that say, um, no, actually, she was for it before she was against it, and Charlie Gibson ("Charrrrrlie") asks her DIRECTLY about it, and she just, um, lies. Or rearranges the words. But she's sure a little spitfire, huh?

In a way, the online world has made it so that there is little a public figure can say or do without having it documented in a way that comes back to haunt them. And yet, there is still a certain brand of public figure who--in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary--continues to repeat something which is verifiably not the case.

I am trying to open my mind up to both sides of the political debate right now: I watch the Palin acceptance speech and interviews, I watch McCain on the The View, I even read a Peggy Noonan column in the WSJ today (Whew. And I thought I was torturing myself reading David Brooks in the NY Times.)

I watch and read the other side because I imagine that I am the type of person who informs myself of both sides of the argument, if only to equip myself with greater ammunition.

But I am also realizing that I watch things like the Palin interviews because I am left breathless by the sheer audacity of the rhetoric and spin and--let's just call a spade a spade--the lies. It's a trainwreck kind of breathlessness, that weird combination of being horrified and fascinated all at once.

It occurred to me last night that we have, coincidentally, done many of our shows around big elections. We were working on "Billy" during the 2004 election, and our show became about the fetishization of war, and the sexy side of fear-mongering, and the way that propaganda doesn't ever really change. And that show, I think, also was illustrative of the larger idea that so much of the American story is about selling a version of truth that is inherently more compelling--or watchable, or riveting--than the TRUE truth. If I was to say right now how the current cultural and political climate is affecting the thoughts I'm having about this show, it is this idea, contained in this story that Ron Suskind wrote about in a profile of Bush in the 2004 election:

"In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

I think in this election, this idea governs not so much the idea of America as the idea of the individuals who would run America. Peggy Noonan got caught on tape bemoaning the Palin selection because of this "political bullshit about narrative," and yet--personal narrative is the main issue at stake here, whether or not it should be.

Obama, in my mind, is awesome because he is a marriage between compelling personal narrative and persona and a clear, intelligent mind coupled with an advocacy of sound and needed policy.

But I get the Palin thing. There will be people tonight who watch that interview and won't see what I see--someone without an ability to answer tough political questions with her own thoughts and version of her party's platform. Instead, they will see what they are crafting for us to see (and which, in fairness, some of her actual story lends itself to): A tough broad, Annie Oakley for 2008, with that hairdo and those glasses and her "snow machine" racing husband and her brood and her unlikely rise from the PTA and they'll start to imagine themselves in the same position, and they'll think "she's like me," when really they'll mean that she's like the version of themselves they would like to create, they would like to go from the PTA to the White House, it's a good movie, right?

This is not condescending. I think it's just a different way of assessing this thing. Well, maybe it's a little condescending. But the truth is--well, who knows, really? So might as well peddle your own version of it, yeah? And those of us who are so concerned with what the truth of this woman is, maybe that Bush aid is right--while we're trying to get at the verifiable version of Sarah Palin, she's selling the version of herself that is the most compelling and electable and watchable, and she and the McCampaign are plastering her face on every mag and newspaper and television channel, and they are leaving us "truth seekers" in the dust.