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How about Equal Time for the Truth?

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Ted Rall

           Mark Twain said: “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.” Ironically, he didn’t. The quotation should correctly be attributed to Jonathan Swift. The lie remains in high orbit.

            Even when the truth comes to light, it gets nothing close to the wide distribution of the original disinformation. Liberal and conservative historians agree that the Tonkin Gulf incident, as described to Congress by an LBJ out to lie the country into invading Vietnam, never happened; how many Americans know that? Despite the absence of evidence, 40% of Americans believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Corporate media promoted the outlandish theory that Russia bombed its own natural gas pipeline and now admit there’s no way that’s true; even well-read and well-informed news consumers can be forgiven for having missed the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it retractions.

            Can we fight the “psyopcracy,” a media environment saturated by sophisticated psychological operations that create an alternative reality designed to expand U.S. influence overseas and stifle dissent in the U.S.?

The challenge is enormous. Political partisans prefer news content that confirms their pre-existing biases. And corporate media outlets, having long abandoned oppositional coverage of the political class in favor of access journalism, are happy to help. Corporate bosses save expenses by allowing reporters not to have to check things out as long as those things are uttered by an official, wearing a suit. Why not dish out (free) government propaganda?

            We may not be able to win the fight for journalistic integrity. But we should define what winning, or at least, starting to win, might look like.

            In states like Utah, Michigan and Wisconsin newspapers, broadcast outlets and other journalistic organizations that publish a libelous story can dodge a defamation lawsuit by quickly issuing a retraction of equal or greater prominence than the offending article. The correction should amount to the same or a greater number of words or broadcast time, feature a headline of equal or greater size, appear in a similar font of equal or bigger size, and be placed at least as prominently as the original, mistaken piece. If the defamatory material appeared on the front page, a page 33 retraction is deemed inadequate.

            Dictating similar remedies on the federal level would not pass constitutional muster. But the following thought exercise is useful when, considering the standards that ought to be voluntarily adhered to by media organizations. Imagine, if you can, in this day of spin and bluster, that media outlets who publish misinformation and disinformation — specifically, those that do so intentionally, after having been made aware of serious doubts about the material — were required to give equal prominent to the corrections after they got a story wrong.

Though I empathize and sympathize with individual victims of libel, my concern here is major-league fraud, perpetrated against readers and news consumers, in some instances so severe that they can provoke international conflict.

What if we lived in a world where all the journalistic enterprises that distributed George W. Bush’s lies about Saddam Hussein’s purported weapons of mass destruction and supposed ties to Al Qaeda had been required to run the same number of stories, at the same word count, at equal levels of prominence, about the fact that Bush and his minions had lied the country into a war that killed a million Iraqis and destroyed America’s reputation around the world? Countering Bush’s propaganda with an equal flow of anti-Bush truth might have prompted voters not to reelect him in 2004.

Instead, half of Republican voters still believed, 12 years after the invasion in 2015, that the US had found WMDs in Iraq. It did not. If you don’t think delusions like that have widespread, political, implications, or that some of those Republicans might have become Democrats if they knew the truth about George W. Bush, I have a war I’d like to sell you.

Some journalists might worry about a chilling effect. What if a newspaper was more reluctant, more cautious to go with a story that they weren’t totally sure about? What if they were required to take an extra day or two to verify their assertions? What, if, in such cases, rather than endlessly repeating the same narrative, they published it fewer times? It’s hard to see how any of these consequences would pose a threat to a vibrant and free press.

Of course, the truth deserves more than equal time with lies. People who fall for the lies can easily miss, subsequent truthful, retractions.

Equal time isn’t nearly enough. But it’s a start.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

We’re the Conserva-teases!

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Ted Rall

Whether it’s build back better or a Supreme Court confirmation fight, there’s a certain set of Republicans in the Senate around Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney and Susan Collins who always tease the Democratic counterparts and the media that they might vote Democratic, but they never do.

Fun for the Whole Country! Race Trial!

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Ted Rall

Every so often there’s another so-called “race trial.” Whether the defendant is white as in the Arbury trial or Black as with O.J. Simpson, or a racially-tinged trial like that of Kyle Rittenhouse, Americans increasingly root for their side the same way that they support their favorite sport team. These clown shows substitute for rolling up our sleeves to try to get rid of racism once and for all.

Abortions and Tattoos

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Ted Rall

Joining Utah and South Dakota, the state of Missouri is quickly moving toward requiring a three-day waiting period for women seeking abortions. What is the logic behind this? Do they really think women aren’t thinking these decisions through?

SYNDICATED COLUMN: Will Polygamy, Adult Incest, Prostitution, Masturbation, Adultery and Obscenity Be Legalized Next? Let’s Hope So.

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Ted Rall

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Privacy is a basic human right. Yet, for 200+ years, Americans have tolerated “morals laws” that told us who we could marry and what sexual positions they were allowed to enjoy.

You couldn’t marry outside your “race” in every state until 1967. Oral and anal sex were illegal until 2003. But morals laws are doomed. Courts are throwing the government out of our bedrooms.

Puritanism is dying hard. Some people still want the police to regulate our sex lives. In his dissent to the 2003 Supreme Court decision striking down anti-sodomy laws in Texas, right-wing Justice Antonin Scalia complained that the SCOTUS had undermined “the ancient proposition that a governing majority’s belief that certain sexual behavior is ‘immoral and unacceptable’ constitutes a rational basis for regulation.”

The ancient stupid proposition.

Agonizing about an imminent “massive disruption of the current social order,” Scalia predicted ten years ago that, after the government relinquishes its power to govern personal sexual behavior and accepts that what happens between consenting adults in Americans’ bedrooms is their own damned business, “every single…law” against “bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity” would fall in the wake of Lawrence v. Texas.

“This effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation,” Scalia said.

It looks like Scalia was right about that. Bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication and obscenity will likely be legalized in the near future. (But not bestiality. Animals can’t consent, so hands off Fido and Mittens.)

Thank God!

Lawrence has been repeatedly cited by judges ruling in favor of same-sex marriage.

Next to go: Laws against polygamy and bigamy.

Citing Lawrence, a federal judge recently declared parts of Utah’s anti-polygamy statutes unconstitutional. The U.S. Constitution, Judge Clark Waddoups ruled, protects Americans from “unwarranted government intrusions into a dwelling or other private places” and allows “an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression and certain intimate conduct.” Which includes butt sex. And having multiple spouses. Assuming you can handle them.

Legal experts say though the politics are different than they are for gay marriage — there isn’t a big, well-funded polygamist-rights movement — it’s only a matter of time before anti-polygamy laws get thrown out. Right-wingers, reeling from the fact that gay marriage has been made legal in 14 states, are freaking out about polygamy.

“Same-sex marriage advocates have told us that people ought to be able to ‘marry who they love’ but have also always downplayed the idea that this would lead to legalized polygamy, a practice that very often victimizes women and children,” Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a Christianist group, said in a statement. “But if love and mutual consent become the definition of what the boundaries of marriage are, can we as a society any longer even define marriage coherently?”

Heaven forbid that “love and mutual consent” become the defining requirements for marriage!

Nothing lasts forever — not in a nation with a 50% divorce rate — but it’s clear that same-sex marriage will eventually be the law of the land.

Polygamy logically follows. “Liberals and libertarians tend to believe private sexual conduct between consenting adults ought to be beyond the reach of the law,” as Conor Friedersdorf writes in The Atlantic. “Applying that principle consistently would seem to carve out a decriminalized sphere for polygamous families.” Also, one assumes, for those organized around polyandry (one wife, multiple husbands).

It is estimated that there are 30,000 to 50,000 polygamous families living in the United States.

When gays and lesbians began agitating for the right to be married, I didn’t understand why they’d want to. Obviously, the legal protections, tax benefits and healthcare advantages are nice. But wasn’t one of the best parts about being gay that you couldn’t get married?

After mulling it over, same-sex marriage passed my one-question test for proposed changes: What harm might result? I couldn’t think of any. The best argument against same-gender that it “violates the sanctity of marriage.” Which is a set of words strung into a meaningless phrase. What sanctity? How does gay marriage hurt straight marriage? It can’t. It doesn’t. The same is true of polygamy and Scalia’s other bugaboos.

Same-sex marriage has been a rapid, and radical, change. Yet now, most Americans agree with me that it’s a good idea.

Let freedom march on. Including the freedom to jerk off.

As Justice Scalia said, there is no longer a constitutional basis for laws against masturbation. In Connecticut, where prisoners are banned from self-pleasure, it is time to let inmates touch their nutmegs. In Alabama, where you can yank it with your bare hands but not with the aid of a device, let a thousand Fleshlights sing.

Let us join the civilized world by decriminalizing the 50% to 70% of married Americans who have sex with people who are not their spouse. “In nearly the entire rest of the industrialized world, adultery is not covered by the criminal code,” The New York Times reported in 2012. In the U.S., on the other hand, cheating is a crime in 23 states, and, for members of the military, grounds for court-martial.

In Minnesota, single women who have sex at all are subject to one year in prison plus a $3000 fine.

Prosecutions for adultery are rare but not unheard of. “Just a year after the Lawrence decision, John R. Bushey Jr., then 66, the town attorney for Luray, Va., was prosecuted for adultery and agreed to a plea bargain of community service. A year later, Lucius James Penn, then 29, was charged with adultery in Fargo, N.D. In 2007, a Michigan appellate court ruled that adultery can still support a life sentence in that state,” reported USA Today.

Many arguments in support of moralizing legislation focus on the effect of targeted behavior on the vulnerable, including women and children. Moralizers miss that their proscriptions increase abuse by driving victims underground. For example, polygamous religious cults use their illegal status to isolate children, forcing some to marry against their will. Because they’re in secret compounds, they can’t call the police. Prostitution is most dangerous in states and countries where the oldest profession is illegal.

As gays and lesbians marry, there is zero sign of Scalia’s “massive disruption of the current social order.” To the contrary: morals laws are the disruptive force. Laws against victimless crimes subvert the primary purpose of law: to promote the common good. Laws that ban behavior that is widespread (such as adultery and masturbation) effectively criminalize the majority of citizens, which undermines respect for government.

Society can and will debate morality. It should not enforce moral judgments about personal behavior through the courts.

Moral laws are immoral.

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COPYRIGHT 2013 TED RALL

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