Somewhere in the stacks of stuff that form my life, are newspapers and magazines reporting the event. The death of Queen Victoria. The ascension of Edward VII, and subsequently of George V. The election of Franklin Roosevelt. George VI’s declaration of war on Germany. The marriage of the Princess Elizabeth. The divorce of the Princess Margaret. The beginnings of human life, as documented by Lennart Nilsson. The moon landing. The Challenger disaster. The death of Diana, The events of 9/11. And so on.
One of the events so recorded, by people paying attention on both sides of the Atlantic, was the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II.
Unfortunately, I don’t guess I collect such things on a regular basis as my ancestors did.
First, because it’s much more difficult to. Events move so quickly, and things change so fast that–if you didn’t grasp it first time around–poof!–it’s gone forever.
Second because the physical fact of “newsprint” isn’t nearly as ubiquitous as it used to be. As with “books,” much “printed” matter is now digital, which is great when it comes to accessibility, but frightening, when things previously disseminated as “fact” can be changed without notice and without editorial clarification, and can be “disappeared” forever from the universe.
One recent small example, relating to the current governor of Minnesota:
Tim Walz jumped on the opportunity to inveigh in the procreation wars by stating that he and his wife had been through In Vitro Fertilization in order to facilitate the birth of their two children. (IVF is a complex, drawn out, painful process which–as difficult as it is on the face of it–also has residual difficulties in that, often, many embryos are created to help with the fertilization process, and then–when they are no longer needed–are simply destroyed.)
Subsequently, it became clear that Tim and Gwen Walz had used a different infertility procedure, Intrauterine Insemination (IUI). One that is much simpler and which can better be described as “assisting” rather than “going around” nature, when it comes to getting the man’s sperm into contact with the woman’s egg. No lengthy process is undertaken, no painful hormone shots are required, and no “spare” embryos are either created or destroyed.
All that’s fine. Bless. I’m a fairly smart and rational person who’s all in favor of more babies, and I “get” all that.
Apparently, the Minneapolis Star Tribune (just the example here), doesn’t trust me to do so.
And so they changed the headline, somewhere between March and August of 2024. Without an editorial note. So a person reading the story today might have no idea that Walz had once gilded the lily and misrepresented the truth.**
So much else in Walz’s biography–his retirement rank in the military, his veteran status, his misrepresentations during his DUI (driving under the influence) arrest in 1995, his false assertions of having received an “Outstanding Young Nebraskan” award from the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce in 1993, his appalling performance for his state during Covid, and, most recently, and ridiculously, his lies about not properly spicing up his “white guy” tacos, when, in 2022, he referred to his “award winning recipe for “Turkey Taco Hot Dish”–some of these are consequential, and some are so silly, they beggar belief.
And yet the mainstream media seems intent on burying the facts.
On a different tack, let’s go back just a couple of months, to this post here:
Irresponsible, Out-of-Control Woman Shoots Dog She’d Set Up to Fail
About one-time darling of the MAGA Republicans, and then-possible Trump VP candidate Kristi Noem.
Also included in Noem’s book was a recounting of her meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. It’s very clear that such a meeting never took place, although she’s quite explicit:
Through my tenure on the House Armed Services Committee, I had the chance to travel to many countries to meet with world leaders – some who wanted our help, and some who didn’t. I remember when I met with the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. I’m sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants (I’d been a children’s pastor after all).
But, oh, Lord. The spinning she did, before the meeting (which is recorded for posterity in my print edition of the book) was–BZZZT!!–magically expunged from Kindle and the audiobook.
Noem insists that “as soon as [she] became aware of” the Kim Jong Un anecdote, and that “when it was brought to [her] attention,” she immediately requested that it be removed from the Kindle edition and from the audiobook.
Oh, honey.
You narrated the bloody audiobook. You read your own words. Including the bit about your meeting with Kim Jong Un.
And then–when you were caught out as a liar, you asked that those words be deleted where they could be, and expunged wherever possible from platforms that exposed you. Without notation and attribution.
And so it was done.
I am very much afraid that history (even that from–say–five minutes ago) will never be the same again.
What do you think?
**Walz’s defenders, who claim he’s just a bit sloppy with language, and that he speaks the way all the rest of us dumbasses–who don’t know the difference between IVF and IUI–do, might want to take a beat, and stop insisting that Kamala Harris was never the Border “Czar,” which–after all–is just another shorthand term we all (including the members of the mainstream media for several years) used to describe someone who’s in charge of something.
Hello?
