We have met the enemy and it is TLDNR

Matt Wuerker touches on the Fast-and-Furious scandal, but I have to say the real problem is not gullible gunowners, the profusion of firearms or a vast rightwing conspiracy -- though it would be helpful if people were less gullible and if the rightwing conspiracy were, indeed, a myth.

The real threat is a conspiracy of stupidity. And it's not just about Fast-and-Furious, though that's a handy example.

I don't expect everyone to read the Fortune takedown on the alleged scandal. The acronym TLDNR (Too Long Did Not Read) may be a product of the Internet, but the preference for short, easily digestible infochunks is not all that new. Nobody read "The Pentagon Papers," either. 

But, when I say "nobody," I don't literally mean "nobody."

There are people called "staffers" who read these things in their entirety, boil them down and pass on the basics to their bosses, whether those are congressmen or news producers. 

Or, at least, there used to be.

And there need to be, because uninformed nitwits are a poor bulwark against dedicated liars. 

When Hilary Clinton said that there was a "vast rightwing conspiracy" in '98, the chorus of mockery from the right was part of what she was talking about. The attack ads of Superpacs are deliberate distortions, as were the Whitewater reports, as were the attacks on Anita Hill.

And so Nancy Pelosi says that discussion of the Affordable Health Care is so fraught with rhetoric, distortions and out-of-context generalities that it's very hard for the public to get a grip on what the act would actually do, but that the benefits will be apparent once it is in place. This makes passage of the bill critical, because, once people actually have these benefits, the turmoil will settle down.

But the conspirators boil it down to "we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it" -- a refusal to share the truth -- and then distort it to "we have to pass the bill to find out what's in it," implying that its supporters haven't read it.

If it were an innocent mistake, they would post more than a 10-second video clip, thereby inadvertantly including the context and not just the spinnable quote.

And when Fox News uses the "wrong" crowd shots to show massive turnout for a conservative rally or edits a soundbite to distort what the president said, you can't continuously chalk it up to error, since real errors don't have a consistent bias. (And I had to add "2012" to the Google search to narrow it down to the example I wanted. Sheesh.)

I don't know how you convince people that they are being lied to, since one of the first rules of establishing a cult is to tell people, "They don't want you to hear the truth, so they're going to tell you that we're lying ..."

Still, it doesn't help when TLDNR becomes part of how network news works.

That is, it's one thing when Brian Williams thinks that, given the 24 minutes or so that he has to inform the American people, he should devote 15 or 20 percent of that time to a viral YouTube clip that anyone with a Facebook account saw four days ago.

But I heard a network anchor -- forget which one but it's not an isolated incident -- describe Fast-and-Furious as a scandal in which ATF agents sold guns to the cartel.

That's not the result of conspiracy. That's the result of stupidity. 

That's the result of not reading the Fortune piece or of not having anyone on your staff read it and explain it to you, despite the buzz it has generated. (How's about you stop searching for lolcats and look at Google News once in a while?)

And it's also the result of simply not knowing that the ATF is not accused of buying and selling guns, but rather of letting transactions happen. Whether you believe the conservative take, that they chose not to intercept the guns or, as revealed in the Fortune article, that they were prevented from intercepting the guns, nobody -- well, except you -- is accusing them of being actively involved in the transactions.

The general public tends to be trusting, which is a kind word for gullible, and, if the conspirators tell them that Polish saboteurs attacked a radio station on their soil, they're likely to believe it.

But it's easier to pull off if the networks have uninformed, gullible spokesmodels reporting the news.

The pity is, while stupid can't be helped, it is nowhere near as common as "needlessly and willfully ignorant," which can.

Even little girls should know that.

Comments

[Mark Jackson]

"There's a unanimity of gullibility out there."
- Clifford Irving, who ought to know

[Gilda Blackmore]

More people should read "Agnes"!

[Sherwood Harrington]

I'm sure I'd agree with this post -- because I almost always agree with what you have to say -- if I had the patience to read the whole thing.

[Sherwood Harrington]

Oh, great. Once again, I forgot that this blog doesn't take embedded links. Here's what "if I had the patience to read the whole thing" was supposed to link to, and, no, it's not worth this much effort: http://www.flickr.com/photos/creekrunningnorth/7451600080/

[ddc]

In Go Comics, the is a link to this column. Is that a copywrite violation or something you don't want done?

[Mike Peterson]

Well, any violation of copyright would have started here, though what I do is "fair use." I've only had one cartoonist ask that I not link, and he only wanted to approve it ahead of time, which wouldn't work unless he wanted a phone call at 5 a.m..

Others are pleased to be featured. And I'm pleased to be pointed out for (potentially) more traffic.