Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for June 24, 2023

Mariah was at a low point then.

Brian Williams may have been in this meeting.

As long as it is plausible, you can say it’s true. And, if it’s blatantly false, you can swear on the Bible you’re hold upside down that it’s true as you quote, “two Corinthians.”

Two Corinthians walk into a bar… Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

I just skip over the Roland story arcs. They peeve me off too much.

Admitting to lying doesn’t make it better. Oddly enough, not admitting to lying doesn’t make it better either.

The truth is too complex for the public to grasp anyway

I have (before he passed) a cousin who genuinely believed that any event that COULD have happened in his life is just as true as the things that actually did happen. He had a whole spin about being “shot at over there” (Vietnam) while in the Marine Corps, yet he spent his ten years in the Corps in St. Louis, in a software development center. And how his “fiancée” sent him a Dear John letter while he was in the war, never mind he’d never been engaged and was 19 years old at the time. I have no idea how his mind could work like that.

It does help to have a basic education. I remember one news report that residents of Richmond, CA were asked to “shelter in place” because of a “silicon dioxide” leak.

Silicon dioxide is SAND.

Sulfur dioxide is a poisonous gas that sometimes leaks from oil refineries.

I may have let it slip that I was a star volleyball player at Baruch University, and ended up having BOTH my knees replaced…

It’s okay. The viewers don’t want the truth; they just want their prejudices reinforced.

Reminds me of a scene in an episode of M*A*S*H where Major Winchester claims to have had dinner with Audrey Hepburn. Hawkeye and B.J. think Winchester made that up. But, Winchester has a photograph of himself and Audrey Hepburn.

If the facts aren’t juicy enough, pad them out with baseless speculation.

Precede your useful fiction with “People are saying…” If you’re famous, it will get quoted and retweeted, and almost instantly people will really be saying just that. And if many people are saying it, it must be true, or as good as. That’s how magical thinking, or rather unthinking wishing, works.

Television news is like ordering an expresso but getting served de-cafe.

One of them being that he has brains enough to be a reporter