Who Speaks Truth to the Speakers of Truth to Power?
Sandcastles and the man in the arena.
Mark Twain, H.L. Mencken, George Carlin, P.J. O’Rourke, Bill Hicks, Gore Vidal, Hunter S. Thompson, and Lenny Bruce. Matt Taibbi, Noam Chomsky, Freddie deBoer, Michael Tracey, and Chris Hedges. Christopher Hichens, in half his moods. Glenn Greenwald, before he became Tim Pool. Jon Stewart, before he became John Oliver. Stephen Colbert, before he became… himself. What do these figures have in common?
Politically, they’re all over the map. Gather them in a room and they’d find much to disagree on.1 What they share is a personality type. There’s an old journalism adage that goes, “Whatever a patron desires to get published is advertising; whatever he wants to keep out of the paper is news.” You may have come across a paraphrased version misattributed to George Orwell: “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is public relations.” There’s a certain kind of person who lives by that ethos. They’re overrepresented among political journalists, writers, critics, satirists, and comedians. They’re also overrepresented among people I greatly admire. They live by a sort of code. This code does not include being fair, neutral, objective, or balanced. It discourages outright lies, fabrications, and falsehoods — but neither does it demand the whole truth. It is reducible to a single dogma: unconditionally resist all power and authority, everywhere and at all times. This is where I part company with many of my heroes. Speaking truth to power is all well and good, but it’s nowhere near enough to constitute a coherent approach to commentary.
This anti-authority ethos can lead different people in different directions. It made Twain regretful, Carlin a nihilist, Mencken a misanthrope, Greenwald a conspiracist, and Chomsky a clown. It’s a cynical, pessimistic, relentlessly negative headspace to inhabit. It erects a veneer of superficial edginess, but in a free society, mainlining popular discontent and taking potshots at power from the bleachers is just about the safest thing any intellectual could do. A blind hostility toward power often ties in with what might be called the critic’s mentality — heavy on finding fault, light on solutions. It should come as no surprise that the political camps most critical of power and least forthcoming with workable alternatives — socialism, libertarianism, and anarchism — are a haven for this type of personality. The appeal is understandable. The critic operates from a position of comfort and security. Who wouldn’t want the influence and prestige of being a public intellectual while avoiding the vulnerability of being the “man in the arena”? Who wouldn’t want to gleefully kick down the sandcastles of others without having any of their own to guard?
This raises a more fundamental question: what even is “power”? As I wrote in a previous piece, “Every 60-year-old male CEO has the power to fire a 25-year-old female employee, or to make her work very unpleasant. This is power. Any 25-year-old female employee has the power to completely destroy their male boss’s career and reputation with a single accusation on social media. This, too, is power.” Given how many forms it can take, it is more than a little presumptuous to anoint oneself the arbiter of power. And, of course, there’s the inconvenient fact that not all power is bad. Not all power is abused. Not all power is tyrannical, or oppressive, or unjust — and that is not solely due to the vigilance of our intrepid watchdogs. Even at the highest levels of power, every side deserves a hearing. Every side deserves understanding. To be uninterested in every point of view belies a narrow-mindedness and incuriosity unbecoming of any serious thinker.
Some journalists insist that a categorically adversarial ethos is central to doing the job properly — that any approach not centered on challenging authority, punching up, finding fault, and speaking truth to power produces drivel at best and journalistic malpractice at worst. But that premise is false. It’s not the primary job of the press to hold power to account. That’s the public’s role. In order to do that, the public needs reliable information — that’s the job of journalism. The chief function of the press is finding truth. And the truth is, sometimes the authorities are right. Sometimes leaders are prudent. Sometimes the “establishment” does the job better than any upstart could. Sometimes, power needs defending, critics need criticizing, and the proverbial “little guy” needs to be told that his every impulse, instinct, and impression are not sacrosanct. The truth is not always sexy, or salacious, or riven with conflict and struggle. Sometimes (I hope you’re sitting down), the truest thing to be said is that everything went well, progress has been made, the powers that be made the right call, and we have a pretty good thing going here.
This may all seem a bit too abstract and niche. After all, the anti-power mindset was never the norm, even within the press — and that’s truer now than ever. Journalism and other professional-managerial sectors have never been more conformist, partisan, and blinkered than they are right now. It’s one of the reasons why institutional trust is in free fall. Consequently, it’s why alternative media has been flourishing. There is an appetite for something different — for skepticism, freethinking, and truth-telling. A blanket adversarial stance to power might fill a market need, but it’s not the corrective the media landscape needs. The remedy for deeply flawed pandemic reporting isn’t Bret Weinstein. The answer to institutional militarism isn’t a Chomskyite “America bad” dogma. Two extremes don’t balance one another out. They just create feedback loops that polarize the landscape even further. We don’t need equal and opposite radicalism, we just need nuance.
In the hands of a skilled writer or orator, the critical, anti-authority mentality can produce some of the most deliciously biting and witty prose. But in the absence of ideas, nuance, and fair-mindedness, even the most eloquent writing can only paper over the hollowness inherent to an incomplete examination. The world is too complicated for any one-size-fits-all approach. There are too many variables and moving parts. If there’s an ethos or code we should strive for, it is to take everything case-by-case.
See also: “George Carlin and the Truth About ‘Punching Down’”
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I’m picturing a Celebrity Deathmatch battle royale.
I still may not have agreed with all of it, but I damn sure loved read it.