[extropy-chat] FWD (SK) The Interactive Truth

[Terry W. Colvin]

June 15, 2005


  The Interactive Truth

By STACY SCHIFF

It used to be that the longest unprotected border in the world was that 
between the United States and Canada. Today it's the one between fact 
and fiction. If the two cozy up any closer together The National 
Enquirer will be out of business.

More than 60 percent of the American people don't trust the press. Why 
should they? They've been reading "The Da Vinci Code" and marveling at 
its historical insights. I have nothing against a fine thriller, 
especially one that claims the highest of literary honors: it's a movie 
on the page. But "The Da Vinci Code" is not a work of nonfiction. If one 
more person talks to me about Dan Brown's crackerjack research I'm 
shooting on sight.

The novel's success does point up something critical. We're happier to 
swallow a half-baked Renaissance religious conspiracy theory than to 
examine the historical fiction we're living (and dying for) today. And 
not only is it remarkably easy to believe what we want to believe. It's 
remarkably easy to find someone who will back us up. Twenty-five years 
ago George W. S. Trow meditated on this in "Within the Context of No 
Context." Then it indeed appeared that authority and orthodoxy were 
wilting in the glare of television. Have we exterminated reason in the 
meantime?

If you are 6 years old and both your parents read one online, you can be 
forgiven for not knowing what a newspaper is. You would also be on to 
something. The news has slipped its moorings. It is no longer held 
captive by two-inch columns of type or a sonorous 6 p.m. baritone. It 
has gone on the lam. Anyone can be a reporter - or a book reviewer, TV 
star, museum guide, podcaster or pundit.

This week The Los Angeles Times announced 
<http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-ednote12jun12,0,3840544.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials> 
its intention to exile the square and stodgy voice of authority farther 
yet. The paper will launch an interactive editorial page. "We'll have 
some editorials where you can go online and edit an editorial to your 
satisfaction," the page's editor says. "It's the ultimate in reader 
participation," explains his boss, Michael Kinsley. Let's hope the 
interactive editorial will lead directly to the interactive tax return. 
On the other hand, I hope we might stop short before we get to 
structural engineering and brain surgery. Some of us like our truth the 
way we like our martinis: dry and straight up.

Kinsley takes as his model Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia to 
which anyone can contribute, and which grows by accretion and consensus. 
Relatedly, it takes as its premise the idea that "facts" belong between 
quotation marks. It's a winning formula; Wikipedia is one of the Web's 
most popular sites. I asked a teenager if he understood that it carries 
a disclaimer; Wikipedia "can't guarantee the validity of the information 
found here." "That's just so that no one will sue them," he shrugged. As 
to the content: "It's all true, mostly."

What if we all vote on the truth? We don't need to, because we will be 
overruled by what becomes a legend most: entertainment. Twenty-one 
percent of young Americans get their news from comedy shows. Journalism 
once counted as the first draft of history. Today that would be 
screenwriting. As Frank Rich reminds us 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/12/opinion/12rich.html>, the enduring 
line from Watergate - "Follow the money" - was not Deep Throat's. It was 
William Goldman's. And "Show me the money" was Cameron Crowe, not 
President Bush.

Evidently Deep Throat himself carped, pre-Watergate, that newspapers 
failed to get to the bottom of things. Of course apocrypha have always 
had staying power. That story about the cherry tree was a lie. 
Especially in unsettled times, we love conspiracy theories. They are 
comforting and safe. You can go out with a conspiracy theory after dark 
and not worry about foul play. Before Oliver Stone there was 
Shakespeare, although he generally had the good grace to let a century 
or two go by before he contorted history.

What is new is our odd, bipolar approach to fact. We have a fresh taste 
for documentaries. Any novelist will tell you that readers hunger for 
nonfiction, which may explain the number of historical figures who have 
crowded into our novels. Facts seem important. Facts have gravitas. But 
the illusion of facts will suffice. One in three Americans still 
believes there were W.M.D.'s in Iraq.

And that's the way it is.

Maureen Dowd is on book leave.
Stacy Schiff, the author of "A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, 
and the Birth of America" 
<http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9807E3DA1F3FF935A35757C0A9639C8B63&n=Top%2fFeatures%2fBooks%2fBook%20Reviews> 
and a Pulitzer Prize winner, is a guest columnist for two weeks.
E-mail: schiff at nytimes.com <mailto:schiff at nytimes.com>

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/15/opinion/15schiff.html?th&emc=th 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/15/opinion/15schiff.html?th&emc=th>


-- 
"Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright 1992, Frank Rice


Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com >
     Alternate: < fortean1 at msn.com >
Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html >
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