Abstract

The Year of the Fake

The author argues that, rather than being toppled for his adversarial relationship to both the most important truths and the most basic facts, President George W. Bush is actively remaking America in the image of his own ignorance and duplicity. The blacklisting of the almanac was a fitting end for 2003, a year that waged open war on truth and facts and celebrated fakes and forgeries of all kinds. This was the year when fakeness ruled: fake rationales for war, a fake President dressed as a fake soldier declaring a fake end to combat and then holding up a fake turkey. An action movie star became governor and the government started making its own action movies, casting real soldiers like Jessica Lynch as fake combat heroes and dressing up embedded journalists as fake soldiers. But 2003 was about more than embracing fakery and forgery-it was also about punishing truth-telling. The highest price was paid by David Kelly, the British government weapons expert who killed himself after he was outed as the source of a BBC story on "sexed up" security documents. While truth did not pay in 2003, lying certainly did. Just ask Rupert Murdoch. According to an October study conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, when it comes to the war in Iraq, regular watchers of Murdoch's Fox News are the most misinformed people in America. On December 19 the Federal Communications Commission gave Murdoch the right to purchase the top US satellite broadcaster, DirecTV.