Size Matters
For me, one of the hardest things I do here each week, besides the actual writing, is deciding what to write about. After last week’s effort about the “Un-President”, I intended to get away from politics. So I wrote a nice little piece about my thoughts on my annual inability to accomplish most of my new year’s resolutions. I was all set to publish that piece until I happened to catch the new White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, giving his first briefing to the press.
After a handful of Stepford-staffers made their way into the room, Mr. Spicer strode (or stomped, it was hard to tell) to the podium, and from the start, he was not just regular angry, he was Hulk angry. He berated the press in that out-of-breath, you’re-gonna-get-it, I’m telling Mom kind of way that children have. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d threatened to hold his breath until the press as a whole issued an apology.
The press secretary was upset about reports of attendance at the inauguration that described the attendance as something less than stellar. Comparisons were made to the Obama inauguration from 2009 and it was concluded that more people attended in 2009. Does that make Obama better than the “Un-President”? No, of course not. It doesn’t even make him more popular. It simply means more people showed up in 2009, nothing more, nothing less.
But for the “Un-President” it apparently means a lot. He took pains to mention the size of the crowd, as well as the dishonesty of the big bad media, in his earlier remarks that day at CIA headquarters. The press was accused of publishing photographs that were deliberately framed “to minimize the enormous support that had gathered on the National Mall.” Mr. Spicer even went so far as to claim, “This was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration – period – both in person and around the globe.”
Except it wasn’t. Aerial photographs and Nielsen ratings tell a different story. The “Un-President”, I realized, is a one-upper. All of us, at one time, have encountered a one-upper. Sure, its annoying but its also the kind of thing I can usually run wild with so I set aside my piece on new years resolutions and began another one about the “One-upper-in-Chief.”
It was coming along nicely. I had a nice bit about how the size of a crowd wouldn’t matter much to a sane person but to a narcissistic egomaniac like the “One-upper-in-Chief”, it’s, well, yuuuge.
I devoted a whole paragraph to defining a “one-upper” and had some nifty examples. Things like, if you got an A on the test, the one-upper got an A+. If you’ve seen Tom Brady in person, he’s had dinner with Tom Brady. If you’ve been to the moon, he’s been to Mars. If you’ve been to Mars, he owns Mars. And if you’ve had one Russian hooker pee on you, why naturally, he’s had two. Allegedly.
The whole thing was coming together and then Counselor to the Un-President and Professional UnTruth-teller Kellyanne Conway appeared on Meet the Press. According to the “UnTruth-teller”, Mr. Spicer was simply providing “Alternative Facts.” Wait, what? Obviously the “One-Upper-in-Chief” piece would now have to be shelved. This new “Alternative Facts” thing had the potential for all kinds of snarkery.
“Yes Ma’am. I’m aware that you think I got those test answers wrong, but perhaps you aren’t aware of these alternative facts.”
“Gosh officer, I know your radar gun reads 90, but let me give you some alternative facts.”
“Well Mr. IRS agent, according to my alternative facts, cat food actually is deductible.”
And so on.
But as one alternative fact joke after another popped into my head, I found myself laughing less and less. Instead I began to think about the so-called leader of the free world who is so insecure he had to lie about the size of the crowd at his inauguration, because for him, size apparently does matter. I thought about crazy it is that blatant lies are now called alternative facts. I wondered how long it would be before Mr. Spicer, the UnTruth-Teller, or even the Un-President himself appeared on television to insist the sky was green. And now that facts have alternatives, I wondered just how many people would believe it.
In the meantime, while the sky is still blue, I’ll be rewriting that piece on my resolutions. With the use of alternative facts, I think my success rate just might go up.
