\u201cThese are clothes that absolutely refuse to flatter you,\u201d David Sedaris wrote in the New Yorker last year. He referred to that article when he presented himself to a Juneau audience last Sunday night. The award-winning writer was wearing a sports jacket and shorts that he explained had been made from two pairs of shorts sewn together. \u201cAnd the scary thing is,\u201d he added, \u201cI think I look amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The joke would be on Sedaris if he really believed he looked great. But his \u201cscary\u201d stage act may also have been intended as an \u201cemperor has no clothes jab\u201d at President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
A humorist known for his mix of self-deprecating humor and profound social critiques, it\u2019s sometimes hard to know when Sedaris wants his audience to take him seriously. On this occasion, his attire suggested not until he began reading his essay titled \u201cA Number of Reasons I\u2019ve Been Depressed Lately.\u201d It chronicles his impressions of Donald Trump\u2019s improbable rise to the presidency.<\/p>\n
Like Sedaris\u2019 on-stage appearance, Trump has often boasted about his successes despite the evidence. He\u2019s repeatedly overstated the margin of his electoral college victory and exaggerated the crowd size at his inauguration ceremony. And just two days after he fired his National Security Advisor he referred to his administration as \u201cone of the smoothest running machines in the history of machines.\u201d<\/p>\n
Things have gotten much worse for the president the past two weeks. He fired Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey in the middle of an investigation into possible ties between his campaign and Russian officials. He followed with three contradictory explanations for that decision. After further unsubstantiated revelations, his Deputy Attorney General appointed a Special Counsel to pick up where Comey left off.<\/p>\n
Trump is calling the investigation a witch hunt based on fake news. And there\u2019s more than a few liberals and anti-Trump conservatives inadvertently making that argument for him. For instance, Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) told CNN that a grand jury in New York had been convened to consider evidence in the Russian investigation. His staff picked up that fake story from Louise Mensch\u2019s blog and the Palmer Report, both of which promote conspiracy theories rivaling Alex Jones\u2019 Infowars.<\/p>\n
How do we effectively navigate between fact and fiction in the modern era of fast and free internet news? The answer may straddle the in-between where the only certainty is we don\u2019t know the entire story.<\/p>\n
Sedaris\u2019 writing is relevant to this question. As a longtime regular on National Public Radio and frequent contributor to the New Yorker, he\u2019s often referred to as \u201cone of the most observant writers addressing the human condition today.\u201d But his writings, much of which can be traced back to a diary he began keeping in 1977, have been challenged as unworthy of their nonfiction label.<\/p>\n
Alex Heard is the editorial director of Outside magazine and longtime fan of Sedaris\u2019 work. However, after reading his book titled \u201cNaked\u201d in 2007, he felt the need to question the truthfulness of some stories. \u201cSedaris has never denied putting words in people\u2019s mouths,\u201d Heard wrote, then referred his readers to a New Orleans Times-Picayune article in which Sedaris admitted to exaggerating \u201cwildly, for the sake of the story.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eventually, NPR began labeling his autobiographically-based stories as fiction. But they\u2019re still being sold from the nonfiction shelves. They\u2019ll probably remain there partly because there isn\u2019t an autobiography that\u2019s ever been written without some embellishments of personal observations and recollections.<\/p>\n
More to the point, even the most disputed unauthorized biographies are sequestered to the nonfiction section of libraries. They\u2019re fact or fiction depending on the reader. And that suggests the writers we follow reveal more about us than the biographers or their subjects.<\/p>\n
In these politically polarized times, the same conclusion applies to the news sources we trust. We\u2019ve become a society where our confirmation biases are defining what New York Times columnist Paul Krugman called \u201cNorth Korea levels of alternative reality.\u201d<\/p>\n
Which brings me back to the lesson of Sedaris\u2019 stories. What matters more than whether they\u2019re truth or fabrication is how we see ourselves in his acute observations of a society that\u2019s losing its tolerance for political news that isn\u2019t absolutely black and white.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2022 Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector.<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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