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Fact, fiction and foolishness: 2009 ebbs

by Mark Silva

In this tumultuous final year of the first decade of the 21st Century, we've found ourselves sorting through an extraordinary helping of fact, fiction and foolishness.

Fact: Unemployment in the United States surpassed 10 percent by the government's measure, the highest level of joblessness in a quarter century.

Fiction: The president of the United States is an alien.

Foolishness: Moose makes the best chili.

Sometimes, the convergence of fact and fiction makes for foolishness.

Fact is, the White House is one secure mansion -- anyone who has worked in or around 1600 Pennsylvania Avene knows the hurdles involved in getting inside the place. Fiction: It's impenetrable. This was made painfully clear this week by the foolishness of a Virginia couple dressing up for the evening and inviting themselves to a State Dinner.

The White House has released a photo, but what we'd give for a transcript of the conversation between President Barack Obama and his uninvited guests, Mchaele and Tareq Salahi, at the dinner, the first State Dinner of the Obama White House, held for Manmohan Singh, prime minister of India. Or their chat with Vice President Joe Biden.

The fact is, some jobs were created or saved as a result of the $787-billion stimulus that Obama signed into law after his first month in office, the administration's first attack at a recession understood to be the worst since the Great Depression. The fiction here involves the actual number of jobs, apparently.

The foolishness was supreme: A White House accounting of the jobs created or saved that listed them by congressional districts that don't exist.

The fact is, Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. The fiction has it that he came from Kenya. The foolishness involves how much time has been spent in all sorts of public forums -- including this one -- debating the contention of the "birthers'' that Obama is an alien.

In the clash of fact, fiction and foolishness this year, one longtime and esteemed anchor of the nation's news lost his job: Lou Dobbs left CNN after a long tirade against illegal immigration, which is a fact in this country, and dabbling wih the fiction and fantasies of the birthers, which was sheer foolishness.

Fact is, Obama is one hard-working president. A fiction which we've seen offered in these pages has it that he has taken 100 days of vacation already -- think about it, 300 days into office, 100 days of vacation. Let's see, there was that week at Martha's Vineyard, an occasional long weekend at Camp David. Uh. no.

Another fact is that Obama's predecessor spent more than a year at his ranch in Texas, counting the days, during his eight years as president. Fiction suggests that this was all time off. Presidents don't have much of it. Foolishness is debating any of this.

Facts: The surface temperatures of the world's oceans have increased. The Arctic ice cap has shrunk. Glaciers are melting into the sea. It's fiction to suggest that all of the carbon that human industry and trasnportation is pumping into the Earth's atmosphere has had nothing to do with climate change. A renowned oceanographer whom we know says that, in his decades of scientific research, he has never seen anything more real. It's foolishness to doubt the seriousness of global warming.

It's a fact that Sarah Palin is one popular Republican -- popular among a certain base of supporters, that is. It's fiction to suggest that most Americans view her as ready to step in as the next president of the United States -- some 70 percent view her as unqualified. It's foolishnessness to spend much time talking about the relative merits of moose versus cow as the main ingredient of chili -- yet Palin has taken us there, too.

It's also fun, some of this foolishness, when we get right down to it. There's a certain entertainment value to the assertion: "We eat, therefore we hunt.''

We readily admit to a certain appetite for playful banter, and we've fostered our share of it here during this tumultuous year, in The Swamp.

We also have a high and abiding regard for fact, and little patience for fiction outside the binding of a good Hemingway novel. Some call it censorship when we attempt to sort the fiction from the fact in the publication of comments here -- yet baseless fiction has a seemingly endless half-life on the Internet, and, with so many launching pads for mischief already out there in the ether we are loath to contribute to the global melting of common sense for which e-rumors deserve much credit.

Think of it as reality change.

We humans can do something about it.

Hawaii Opting Out Of Health Care Overhaul

Hawaii wants out of the national health care overhaul because it already has one of the lowest uninsured rates in the country, thanks to its 35-year-old employer mandate system. Hawaii's congressional delegation inserted language into both House and Senate health care bills that provides explicit protection for the landmark Hawaii Prepaid Health Care Act of 1974. It's apparently the only state looking for such an exemption from major health care overhaul.