Sunday, March 21, 2010
A mirror universe where facts don't matter
Dan Radmacher
Recent columns
- Heading back to the debate in Appalachia
- Redistricting process must be taken from pols
- A shutdown remains a very real possibility
- U.S. Navy Vets case argues for campaign limits
From the RoundTable blog
It's like a bizarre plot from Star Trek: The left and right become so polarized that we inhabit parallel universes.
In one universe, for example, the Massachusetts Supreme Court redefined marriage as "the establishment of intimacy." That genuine outrage led a former Republican congressman running against Sen. John McCain in Arizona to argue that the ruling could allow a man to marry his favorite horse.
In the other universe, the Massachusetts Supreme Court did no such thing. The words "the establishment of intimacy" never even appear in the ruling, which defines marriage as "the voluntary union of two persons as spouses, to the exclusion of all others." Note: "two persons" and "voluntary," which pretty well leaves horses out of the equation.
When an occupant of the first universe, J.D Hayworth, the aforementioned former Republican congressman, met an occupant of the second, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, the conversation was confusing, as you might imagine.
Hayworth -- who "Star Trek" fans might be surprised to discover does not have a goatee -- repeated his assertion. Maddow asked for the language, pointing out that it was not in the ruling itself. Hayworth said, "Well, that's fine. You and I can have a disagreement about that."
Maddow, apparently unaware of the schism in the universes, protested: "Well, it either is true or it isn't. It's empirical."
It's either true or it isn't.
How quaint.
Oh, for the days when there were such things as empirical facts -- truths, however small, that all could agree to because, well, they were facts.
There was another dispatch from the right's alternate universe recently. It was a piece by New York Times columnist David Brooks about reconciliation -- that once obscure Senate process that is now at the center of the health care debate.
Brooks wrote about how the use of reconciliation has been growing in recent years and how its use to finalize passage of health care reform on a purely partisan basis would threaten comity in the Senate.
The Washington Post's Ezra Klein pointed out all the factual errors in Brooks' column. The use of reconciliation peaked, for instance, in the mid'80s. In addition, it has often been used to pass controversial legislation on a party-line vote.
Finally, Klein noted that one example Brooks gave -- the Medicare prescription drug benefit -- wasn't even passed using reconciliation.
Klein ended his post with this: "Brooks isn't wrong in the sense that 'I disagree with him.' He's wrong in the sense that the column requires a correction."
Which would be true, except that Brooks clearly inhabits that other universe. And, apparently, in that universe some comity remains in the Senate to be destroyed, and the prescription drug benefit was passed using reconciliation.
The dual universes make it tough on newspapers, like The Washington Post, that try to circulate in both realms. One day, for instance, The Post ran a commentary by Sen. Orrin Hatch, also on reconciliation. Another day, the same paper ran a column by E.J. Dionne pointing out how Hatch's piece got so many significant facts wrong.
Democrats, for example, were not trying to pass health care reform in the Senate using reconciliation. That would be impossible, Dionne noted, since the Senate had already passed the reform bill after beating a Republican filibuster with a 60-vote supermajority.
Dionne also pointed out that Hatch had wrongly stated that Democratic Sens. Robert. Byrd and Kent Conrad were opposed to using reconciliation to finalize health care reform. In fact, Byrd's objection was from a year ago when there was brief discussion about actually passing the legislation, as opposed to amending it, via reconciliation. Conrad, similarly, said it was perfectly appropriate to use reconciliation to make budget-related amendments to the bill.
Well, maybe in this universe. Clearly, Hatch (also no goatee; strange) hails from the other universe, the one where Byrd did not issue a statement affirming that amendments to the health care bill passed by the Senate could be "appropriately considered under reconciliation."
I don't know how we bring these two universes back together, or if it's even possible. In "Star Trek," the collision of matter and anti-matter is extremely explosive.
But it's nothing compared to the collision of fact and anti-fact.
Radmacher is the editorial page editor of The Roanoke Times.
