By Jonah Goldberg
Friday, June 10, 2016
Conversations! Glorious conversations! What more can you
ask for?
The other day, former CBS News darling Katie Couric was
speaking at an event organized by something called “TheWrap.” Specifically, at
its “Power Women Breakfast” in New York. (That is exactly the kind of event I’d
expect Couric to be at, and I don’t even know what it is.)
She was asked about the scandal swirling around her
anti-gun documentary — specifically, the fact that she deceptively edited a
gun-rights group’s response to a question to make the members seem like
dangerous idiots.
I wrote about all that in a recent column, so there’s no
need to repeat myself beyond noting that Couric and her producer are guilty of
outright deception. But I thought her response was amusingly revealing.
“I can understand the objection of people who did have an
issue about it,” Couric said. (The “it” here is the deliberate falsifying of
the truth). “Having said that, I think we have to focus on the big issue of gun
violence. It was my hope that, when I approached this topic, that this would be
a conversation-starter.”
Well, okay then.
After all, who denies that starting conversations — or,
as they often call them in academia, “dialogues” — is the highest aspiration
there is?
For instance, a Central Michigan University professor
claimed last year that she was punched in the face at a Toby Keith concert for
being a lesbian. She later admitted that she actually punched herself, but said
it was worth it because she wanted to start a dialogue.
As the Washington
Examiner’s Ashe Schow recently chronicled, this sort of thing is common on
college campuses. Students and professors initiate or exacerbate a hate-crime
hoax or a false rape accusation. The orchestrators are perfectly happy to
pretend the fraud is real and demonize anyone who casts doubt on the claims.
Then, when the facts come to light, instead of apologies
we’re saturated with a fog of pomposity and self-justification: We were just
trying to start a conversation. Raising awareness of the larger issue is more
important than the mere facts.
That was the excuse offered by a herd of academics on the
tenth anniversary of the Duke University lacrosse rape hoax. Professors there
had taken out ads suggesting the exonerated attackers were racists. In response
to criticism, they insisted that they just wanted to get a good discussion
going.
We’ve heard similar prattling about the University of
Virginia rape hoax and many other fabricated events on college campuses (and
off) going back decades. I started writing about such instances of “lying for
justice” 20 years ago, and it has only gotten worse.
I don’t think people appreciate how pernicious and
widespread this crowdsourced totalitarianism really is. Routine lies in the
service of left-wing narratives are justified in the name of “larger truths,”
while actual truth-telling in the other direction is denounced as hate speech
or “triggering.”
Even when liberals call for an “honest conversation”
about this, that, or the other thing, what they really mean is they want
everyone who disagrees with the prevailing progressive view to fall in line.
Almost invariably, when I hear calls for “frank talk,”
“honest dialogue,” or a new “national conversation,” I immediately translate it
as, “Let the next chapter of indoctrination begin.” It’s a way of luring
dissenters from political correctness out into the open so they can be smashed
over the head with a rock.
Remember, behind every obvious double standard is a
hidden single standard. For instance, earlier this year, The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer came out with a book attacking
libertarian philanthropists Charles and David Koch called Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of
the Radical Right. When asked by NPR’s Steve Inskeep what the nefarious
supervillains of her screed were really up to, she ominously explained, “What
they’re aiming at is changing the conversation in the country.”
Well, so are left-wing billionaire George Soros and his
minions. So is Mayer herself. So are all of these campus fraudsters and
activists. And so is Katie Couric. But when someone on the other side of the
ideological chasm questions the official narrative, they must be demonized or
otherwise silenced. Why? Because the last thing progressives want is to start
an honest conversation. They want to have their conversations — and only their
conversations.
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