“I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
I believe this is the essence to the oath that witnesses in judicial proceedings are supposed to swear. I suppose it’s a good thing that we all aren’t held to such a standard all the time. There would probably be a lot less discussion and a lot more contention.
This came to me while we were watching the O’Reilly Factor the other evening. I have never watched the O’Reilly Factor before but my son Steve had informed me that the Colbert Report was a satire of the Factor and I would appreciate the Report more if I knew what it was satirizing. Interestingly, although I could tell almost instantly that my political positions and O’Reilly’s are poles apart, the show did not instantly offend. Although his position was always clearly obvious, he appeared to allow some discussion of opposing viewpoints. I was on the way to being impressed.
Unfortunately, late in the first episode and throughout the second episode I watched, I was completely disappointed. I have no quarrel with someone who wants to produce a highly biased political propaganda display but they shouldn’t use a slogan like “The spin stops here.” In reality, the spin just gets out of control here. And I trust that is obvious to intelligent viewers.
The episodes I watched included segments criticizing a judge in Vermont for sentencing a child rapist to 60 days in jail. On the face of it, this would appear to be a travesty of justice, a misuse of judicial power that deserves censure, ridicule, and possibly action against the judge. O’Reilly demonstrated or advocated all three. What he didn’t do was go beyond “the face of it”. He seemed to stick with “the truth... and nothing but the truth” but he ignored the part about “the whole truth”. I suspect that’s the hard part for most of us.
On the second episode, O’Reilly even had two guests who, I guess, had been invited to tell the other side, explain why the judge might have given such a sentence and what other considerations there were in this situation. But when each of them tried to explain, O’Reilly shouted them down, SHOUTED THEM DOWN! For what purpose had he invited them if he wasn’t going to listen to them? To give the appearance of “no spin”? To have a pretend debate?
It turns out that, surprise, there is another side to the story. Unless you send all criminals to prison for life or execute them, they return to society. You can punish them all you want in prison but they still return to society some time. In this judge’s experience, the state of Vermont was doing a lousy job of helping sex criminals in jail so when they came out their behavior was not improved by the experience. I don’t know all the facts in this case (O’Reilly wasn’t helping us to find out) but it appears the offender would have treatment opportunities out of jail that he wouldn’t have in prison. The judge seemed to feel that this treatment would be better for society than simple punishment. You can read the Boston Globe's treatment of the debate here. In reality, the sentence was a 10 years to life sentence with all but the first two month's suspended. That's a powerful incentive for the convicted to get treatment.
The whole sentence is still certainly debatable and that’s where O’Reilly could have used his mighty power of the airwaves. But to shout down the invited guests? To silence the opposition? That simply makes him look petty and petulant. And encourages government by mobocracy not democracy.
Well yeah that pretty much is O'Reily. He is very biased and claims that it is unbiased truth, but a lot of people are like that. I've come the opinion that truth telling is a lot like pitching a baseball. You can spin it like crazy so that it looks like it's going one way and then dives another, but if you try to truly have no spin it bobs and weaves like a knuckle ball. The closest to "truth" you can come is a fastball where there is just enough spin to stablize it, and it's always clear where it is going.
ReplyDelete