"What is truth?" asked Pontius Pilate, and he washed his hands.Beset by accusations that the Department of Health and Human Services is using tax money -- some from the Medicare Trust Fund itself -- to supply misinformation to elderly Americans, the department's Secretary, Tommy Thompson, said he would continue to provide "fact-based information."
Fact-based information?
When television creates a show or a TV-movie that takes real people and real stories as its foundation, they claim it is "based on a true story." This means that most of the basic facts about the characters and the plot are essentially correct, but that the dialogue is mostly made up. When they go further afield, they run the disclaimer "inspired by a true story." This means that what you're seeing is, for all practical purposes, totally fictional.
Or perhaps it is "fact-based information."
Then-Lieutenant Bush didn't tell the truth during his National Guard tenure, and President Bush is continuing that tradition. As a candidate, George W. Bush didn't tell the truth about his drug use. As President, he didn't tell the truth about Iraqi attempts to get nuclear weapons in his state of the union address. Now we find out that the Bush administration, up and down the line, hid the truth about the cost of his new Medicare drug program from Congress.
As a result of the, uh, untruths (or should I say, "fact-based information") told by George W. Bush and his team, America has been seriously hurt. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been wasted. The "war on terror" has been postponed while we go after a man who was never a threat to us. Hundreds of Americans, brave young men and women, are dead, and thousands have been wounded.
And they impeached Bill Clinton for having an affair.
Politicians have been lying -- excuse me, providing "fact-based information" -- ever since ... well, ever since there were politicians. But it seems that the Bush administration has created new levels of "fact-based information." And they've also managed to find new ways to pretend that this "fact-based information" was "Truth" after all.
How often do they wash their hands?
We can all agree on one thing. If the President and his staff always told the truth, Washington would be a far more boring place. Of course, there's always Congress...
Copyright 2004, Dan Jacoby
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