Wolf Blitzer – Memphis Flyer

I’ve got a confession to make. I’m in the Secret Society. You know the one I’m talking about. Fox News and Congressman Devin Nunes have outed us now, so there’s no use in denying it. They’ve uncovered how the nefarious “deep state” — the FBI, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the liberal mass media — is secretly working to take down our peerless leader, President Donald J. Trump.

Fox and Nunes have had help, of course — from patriotic Russian bots, Julian Assange, and from the president himself, who was the first to point out that the institutions we once trusted — to keep us safe from enemies foreign and domestic, to insure justice is served, and to inform the public — are all now in cahoots with one goal: to destroy the president’s plan to Make America Great Again.

At our Secret Society meeting last week (I could tell you where it was, but I’d have to have you killed by an FBI agent), there was much concern about this. Several of our leaders actually said they thought the jig might be up.

First to speak was Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, who, let’s be honest, is one of our ringleaders. He told us the bad news — that the president and his minions were onto us. “They’ve figured out that Jim Comey, Andrew McCabe, Rod Rosenstein, and I are lifelong Republicans in name only,” he said. “As you know, all of us really work for Barack Obama, the One True Kenyan …”

Chants arose in the hall — “THE ONE TRUE KENYAN! THE ONE TRUE KENYAN!” — but Mueller raised his hand, asking for silence.

“Yes, Obama is our leader, and he gave us a single instruction when he left office …”

“Take Down Trump!” we chanted. “Take Down Trump!”

“Yes, but I have to be honest with you,” Mueller continued. “That task is getting more and more difficult. Trump is getting rid of us, one by one. If he can take me out, all is lost.”

Then CNN’s Wolf Blitzer took the podium. “My secret friends,” he began, “those of us manning The Situation Room are doing our best to get out damning information about this White House, but it’s getting tougher. Sean Hannity is on to us. Jeanine Pirro is chewing my butt like a pitbull. Tucker Carlson is one sharp cookie, despite that stupid bow tie. And don’t even get me started on Ann Coulter. He, er, she is a force to be reckoned with! Our measly ‘facts’ and ‘breaking news stories’ about Trump’s Russian connections don’t seem to faze these people. We’re calling in fresh pundits every day, but it doesn’t seem to matter.”

Gloom descended upon the room.

Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein then stepped forward, concern clearly etched on his face. “As we planned,” he said, “I’ve tried from the start to skew this investigation to bring down President Trump. First by appointing my friend, Robert, who despite his heroics in Vietnam and decades of service to presidents of both parties, is, as we all know, secretly a crook and a liberal — and one of our best, at that. But we are facing obstacles that we never dreamed of. This patriotic coalition of white supremacists, Russian bots, right-wing media, corporate billionaires, the NRA, and amoral Republican Congressmen may simply prove too much for us.

“Nothing seems to matter, any more,” he continued. “Trump can do anything. Yesterday, he decided to just flat refuse to enforce a Russian sanctions bill passed by Congress by a combined vote of 517-5! How does any president get away with that? It’s crazy. He just ignores legislation passed by Congress, destroys environmental regulations, tweets insane and verifiable lies, raves about an impossible-to-build wall, and still, we can’t stop him. He can have an affair with a porn star — A PORN STAR! — and the evangelicals just love him more. It. Just. Doesn’t. Matter. I’m starting to believe that there is nothing we can do to stop this guy. … I’m sorry.”

The room fell silent as the perfectly diverse crowd stared into their cups of Peruvian chai latte. After a few moments, we all began to head for the doors, exchanging hugs and the Secret Society handshake. For me, it was a somber flight back to Memphis. It seemed an inescapable dark age was descending. I couldn’t even get through my Vanity Fair. Norway, I thought. Maybe Norway.

There’s been much discussion over the past few days about “banned words” in the wake of reports by the Washington Post and other media outlets that multiple agencies in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), have been told by Trump administration officials that they cannot use certain words and phrases in agency documents.

The words purportedly banned for used in official agency reports being prepared for the 2019 budget were: entitlement, diversity, vulnerable, transgender, fetus, evidence-based, and science-based. Several sources at HHS also told the Post that they’d been told to use “ObamaCare” as opposed to the “Affordable Care Act” and to refer to “marketplaces” where people purchase health insurance as “exchanges.”

“The assertion that HHS has ‘banned words’ is a complete mischaracterization of discussions regarding the budget formulation process,” said HHS spokesman Matt Lloyd to The Hill.

So, in conclusion, we have reports arising from multiple sources in several federal agencies to multiple media outlets saying they’d been given instruction as to what words they could and couldn’t use in government documents, followed by a denial from an official spokesperson that any of it ever happened.

Your call.

This semantic kerfluffle should serve to remind us that whoever controls language controls the message. George Orwell famously illustrated this in his novel 1984, set in a dystopian then-future world, wherein citizens of Oceania were constantly exposed by their government to such slogans as “War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery,” and “Ignorance is Strength.” Thirty-three years after Orwell’s future tome, there is little doubt that a battle is raging in this country to control the message.

It seems quaint to think that until as recently as 1987, licensed broadcasters in the U.S. were required to observe something called the Fairness Doctrine, a policy of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that required broadcast license holders to present controversial issues of public importance in a manner that was — in the FCC’s view — honest and equitable. It was imperfect in its execution, but its intention was to guarantee that U.S. citizens would be able to rely on their broadcast media to present a fair and balanced picture of the news of the day. (“Fair and balanced”? I’ve heard that somewhere.)

National news networks, and even local news and affairs programs, were constrained from the kind of partisan cheerleading that passes for news and analysis these days. Broadcasters were required by law to grant equal time to opposing views. Crazy, right?

Nowadays, if you want both sides of an issue, you have to watch and listen to several news outlets. MSNBC is reliably left of center; CNN is slightly left, but usually makes an attempt to present both sides; Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News has basically disintegrated into state media, wholly in service to the Trump/GOP agenda — even going so far as to suggest this week that the FBI was staging a “coup” by pursuing its investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible Russian connections.

What’s next? Alex Jones as Sean Hannity’s new sidekick? I’m still trying to figure out how being “conservative” has come to mean siding with our arch-enemy, Russia, against our own U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies. This is weird and dangerous turf.

The late, great comedian George Carlin had a blistering routine about the “seven words you can’t say on television.” I urge you to dial it up on your local YouTube and watch it. It’s hilarious and scary good. But again, “forbidden words.” How quaint. One night’s channel surfing will make it clear that there are no words that can’t be spoken on your television.

Oh, sure, Wolf Blitzer still can’t just pop off and rhetorically ask, “How the f**k can Kellyanne Conway say that with a straight face?” (Though that would be refreshing.) According to the FCC, there are still “forbidden words” for licensed broadcasters. But there are no forbidden ideas; no forbidden lies; no FCC policy to monitor fairness or equity or balance. It’s the wild west; every viewer for themselves.

Choose what’s fake. Choose what’s real. Choose your truth. Ignorance is not strength.