Have You No Shame?
Have You No Shame?
We are living in an era of extreme shamelessness and it's destroying our politics.
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you were sent this email or are a free subscriber and would like to subscribe, you can sign up here.
Just a quick reminder that I’ll be Zoom Chatting tomorrow at 12:30. I’ll be talking Florida, shame, presidential politics, why I no longer think the Celtics will win the NBA title this year, and maybe we could throw in some Oscar talk. The link is here.
I Don’t Get It
This is honestly one of the most extraordinary video clips I’ve ever seen.
Here’s the transcript: “Liars behave differently. Liars are touchy, sometimes to the point of hysteria. They’re hiding something. That’s the whole point of lying. And they’re worried you’re gonna find out what it is. Liars are fragile because, over time, lying makes you weak and afraid.”
This reminds me of the Seinfeld episode in which George gets a toupee and then refuses to go out with a bald woman. To which Elaine reminds him …
Tucker … YOU’RE A LIAR.
Over the past several weeks, because of the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against Fox News, we’ve learned that Carlson hated Trump “passionately” and couldn’t wait to “ignore” him. In private text exchanges, he called him “a demonic force” and “a destroyer.” He not only mocked the former president’s fantasies about a stolen 2020 election, but he mocked those around Trump who were promoting them — deriding them as liars and “insane.” Yet, on the air, Carlson remained a consistent supporter of the former President and, even worse, continues to peddle his lies about the 2020 election.
Indeed, just this week, Carlson said that the January 6 protesters “believed that the election they had just voted in had been unfairly conducted. And they were right.” He continued, “Given the facts that have since emerged about that election, no honest person can deny it.”
"No honest person can deny it.”
Carlson knows this is not true. We have the proof. In fact, he was upset about Fox News journalists doing actual reporting about the 2020 election — and exposing Trump’s dishonesty — because of the impact on his ratings and Fox’s stock price. He even tried to get one of those reporters fired, notwithstanding his constant whining about “cancel culture.”
None of this will come as a huge surprise. Carlson is an evil and malignant person. As I wrote last year, he has almost certainly contributed to the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of Fox News viewers.
But what I can’t get past is the lack of shame. If I were exposed saying one thing in public and another in private (and I had the highest-rated talk show on cable news), I’d be humiliated. When I make a mistake in a column or even a tweet, I get that red-hot feeling of shame and embarrassment on the back of my neck, which plagues me for days after. Most of us feel this way when our bad behavior is exposed.
It’s one thing to lie. That’s bad. But to be caught lying — and doing it knowingly — is so much worse. And, of course, it’s not just Carlson. Other Fox News personalities like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham have also been exposed as gobsmacking hypocrites and prevaricators. None of them have apologized or sought forgiveness for their actions. Instead, they continue to act as if nothing happened.
Having spent much of my career around politics and politicians (and occasionally corporate leaders), I should not be surprised by this. And yet I am. I find it nearly impossible to fathom how people can so flagrantly and ostentatiously say things they know are not true and feel no shame about it. Maybe they’re all sociopaths or extreme narcissists incapable of empathy or introspection. Perhaps it’s a by-product of modern conservativism, which demands its adherents pledge fealty to a compendium of mistruths.
But then I was scrolling Twitter today and came across this exchange in congressional testimony today with Matt Taibbi, who participated in the Twitter files news dump. He’s not a conservative (he’s more of a nihilist). Still, this clip is astounding.
People died because of the 2008 financial crisis. By one estimate, the death toll was more than 200,000. No reasonable person could truly argue that the “fallout” from an event that killed hundreds of thousands of people, bankrupted millions more, plunged the global economy into a crippling economic downturn, and cost tens of millions of people their jobs was smaller than Donald Trump being de-platformed from a social media website. I suppose you could say that if you’re an idiot (or don’t understand proportionality), but I don’t think Taibbi is a complete moron. Instead, I think he has no sense of shame.
Or what about this latest missive from the culture wars in Florida?
One afternoon a few weeks ago, Alicea Hotchkiss’s 14-year-old son, Eli, came home from his high school in Tampa with a question about something a classmate had said to him. He’d heard the student use the word “gay” as an insult, so Eli responded the way he always does when this happens. “Hey,” Eli said, “my dad’s gay.” But this time, Eli told his mom, the other kid offered a startling rebuke: You’re not allowed to say that at school.
In a nearby community in central Florida, Barbara Mellen attended a recent open house at her son’s elementary school and asked her child’s teacher to suggest a few titles or authors that might help her second-grader develop more interest in reading. The teacher looked anxious, she says, and told her he couldn’t recommend any books.
In the Facebook group Brittany Minor created five years ago for Black mothers like herself in Orlando, discussions among the 2,800 members have reached new depths of frustration and fatigue. These moms are watching what is happening in Florida, the shifting of the political and cultural environment around them, “and they are tired, they feel helpless, they feel hopeless,” Minor says. “The common thread is that people feel broken.”
If I were the governor of the state of Florida and responsible for passing laws that caused this kind of pain, anxiety, and uncertainty, I’d be heartbroken. I’d want to do everything I can to help and protect these people. Of course, the current governor of Florida is not only completely ok with the situation described above, but he is actively trying to make it worse. Why? Because he wants to run for president, and scapegoating LGBTQ teens and black students is like catnip to Republican voters. But even if recognize what DeSantis is doing as cynical politics, I can’t wrap my head around why he doesn’t feel ashamed doing it.
Is this a new development? Are Americans becoming more shameless? I honestly don’t know. I tend to think not, and that in an era when practically every stray thought is recorded, be it via email, text, or camera phone, we simply have more access to it. But I suppose what feels different now is that there’s less social sanction. Acting without shame or getting caught in a lie is hardly considered a sin anymore. Indeed, an entire political party has rallied around and venerated a figure whose life and personae are a lie. And some of our most shameless public figures are simply crazy or mentally ill, so shaming would have no real impact on them.
But with someone like Tucker Carlson — and most of Fox News — the lies are cynical and calculated. As the Dominion lawsuit has shown, they know exactly what they are doing and the lies they are peddling. They simply feel no discomfort about it. And while Fox might pay a big financial price for their misdeeds, I doubt Carlson, Hannity, et al, will get caught in the maelstrom. They’ll simply and shamelessly lie their way out of it.
Years ago, I had a conversation with a prominent Democratic politician who told me that the biggest impediment to normal political discourse in America is the inability of both political parties to agree on “basic facts.” They said that Republicans so constantly lie and mislead, and it makes it impossible to push legislation forward because you’re dealing with one side that relies on data and another that relies on “alternative facts.” I don’t necessarily disagree, but I’m starting to wonder if the real issue is that so many political and media figures don’t feel any responsibility or need to be honest. They’ve cynically decided that lying — openly and without shame — is just part of the job, like fundraising or shaking hands in a diner. Maybe this is just two sides of the same coin, but the shamelessness feels new, different, and deeply destabilizing. If you’re lying and feel no shame about it — there’s no actual impediment to dishonesty. I get that the two political parties are probably never going to agree about “basic facts.” But if they can’t agree that facts actually matter and that the shame of getting caught lying is something to avoid, that’s a far bigger hole to dig out of.
What’s Going On?
This is a great piece by Josh Glancy on treating Israel like any other nation in the world — warts and all.
Speaking of shameless … I present to you Matt Schlapp.
Musical Interlude (and Today in Bob Dylan)