Is there anybody in North America who doesn’t believe that Saddam Hussein was a paranoid shit who thought nothing of killing and torturing his own people if it helped him consolidate his own power (and who killed and tortured thousands of them during his mad reign in Iraq)?
In the three years since the beginning of the most recent Iraq war, that simple truth has been repeated 2,037,564 times. Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity have a competition to see who can say it most often. The New York Times proclaims it in 48 point type headlines (“Saddam bad!”) while The New York Post proclaims it in 64 point type (“Saddam EVIL!”). Southpark has Hussein getting it on with Satan (apparently, Adolph Hitler was unavailable for the part).
If I choose not to repeat this truth until I’m blue in the lips, it’s not that I don’t believe it, it’s that something that has been repeated 2,037,565 times (since you started reading this, Oprah mentioned that it would make a great book) is not news. Something that has been repeated 2,037,568 times (CBS Evening News, Better Homes and Gardens and Howard Stern on satellite radio) doesn’t require me to repeat it to make it true.
I prefer to write about things other people aren’t repeating 2,037,570 (David Letterman and Jay Leno trying to see who can make the least funny joke about it) times. (Like the fact that the United States supported Hussein during the period of his worst atrocities. To my knowledge, this has been repeated only 237 times in the three years since the war started, 201 of them by Noam Chomsky.)
The fact that some truths are repeated 2,037,615 (the Mormon Tabernacle Choir) times while others are repeated 237 times is, in itself, worth considering (and, perhaps, repeating). (No, wait, 238 times: Ed Asner mentioned it in an interview with Entertainment Tonight.) Why is it if you aren’t quick to repeat tales of Saddam Hussein’s infamy (2,037,619 times, now, thanks to Pete Tong, Walter Ong, Rae Dawn Chong and Herman the Talking Tree Stump), you’re dismissed as immoral and likely a traitor, while if you repeat tales of American support for him…you’re immoral and likely a traitor?
(I mean, it’s not like anybody in the White House ever denied the accuracy of the photo of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Hussein in 1983. They just ignored it until the press lost interest – 30.29748 seconds or so later.)
This is by no means the only example. The riots that occurred around the world after the publication of some mild cartoons featuring the prophet Mohammed in Denmark were out of line. Way out of line. So far out of line, you couldn’t even make out a line from where you would be standing if you used telescope. They were a reprehensible attack on free speech.
Since they began, this truth has been repeated 787,423 times. Rush Limbaugh repeats it to open his radio show. Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly (what? – he can’t be the mouthpiece for more than one received truth?) are leaders of the pool to see who will be the person to repeat it for the millionth time. There have been over 60,300 cartoons about the cartoons – editorial page satirical self-reference run amok.
You read the first part of this column, you know the drill: something that’s been repeated 787,424 times (Bill Maher just mentioned it, although that may not count because he was in bed at the time) doesn’t need my voice to repeat it; it’s already accepted wisdom; other truths (the cartoons, whether intentionally or not, became part of a propaganda effort to demonize Arabs) are repeated far less often; yadda cubed.
You gotta ask yourself why something that is repeated 2,037,622 (Angelina Jolie’s adopted Ethiopian baby, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ new child – congratulations, folks – and Dan Rather) or 787,425 (Marshall McLuhan’s spirit being channeled by Gilbert Gottfried) needs more repetitions. Okay, maybe you don’t. But, since I’m the one being asked to do the repeating, I gotta ask myself that question.
I think it has something to do with what, in a more naïve time, used to be referred to as “dissent.” Despite the way it may currently appear, dissent is not about telling the emperor he would look better in more muted colours when everybody else is telling him how wonderful he looks in his new clothes. Dissent is about going beyond the common wisdom and telling the emperor that his new clothes would look better if he actually, you know, got some.
Common wisdom. Hunh. Common wisdom is usually common, but rarely wise.