Before i put head to pillow last night, my tv guide informed me that Senator Rand Paul would be a guest on the Letterman show. Jesus Christ on a Cracker! Why would Letterman allow his late night talk show to become yet another opportunity for the radical right to lie to the American people? I was prepared to be furious with Letterman for his lapse in judgment. But to the best of his ability, Letterman redeemed himself.
I'm sure Rand Paul supporters were thrilled with the way he conducted himself during this interview. A gap-toothed, New York, librul elitist tried his best to shake up a true patriot among men. But the affable, denim clad Paul would not be derailed from his Tea-Party message. Paul spoke, of course, about fiscal responsibility, limited government, the free market, and how the rich are Taxed Enough Already! In a fine example of fact not necessarily reflecting truth, Paul asserted that the wealthy pay most of the taxes in this country, and rattled off a bunch of numbers to prove it! Except the numbers lied, and Letterman knew it. He just couldn't quite figure out why.
Throughout the interview, Letterman did his best to shuck the slogans and engage Paul on specifics. He asked Paul about the Republican agenda to shrink the middle class while offering tax cuts to big corporations and people who could well afford to pay a higher tax rate. In response, Paul blathered something about the all mighty private sector versus the evil government. In another galling moment, Paul asserted that the average teacher gets paid $89,000.00/year, after which Letterman struggled and stuttered, and said they were worth all that and more. Paul spoke with great confidence, and it wasn't hard to see why someone would be left with the impression that he knew his stuff. And that's when the problem became clear to me.
In a way i can completely relate to, Letterman failed to effectively challenge Paul. Even though he was entirely on the right side of the discussion, he just wasn't able to access the necessary series of facts that would have clearly explained what's really been going on for the past 30 years - nearly all of it under Republican watch. Although the collective data would have completely withered Paul's point of view, and proven with example after example that we've "been there, done that" and look where it got us, that information was simply not part of Letterman's verbal arsenal. Nor should it have been. He's a comedian and a late-night talk show host. He's not a journalist. Data points and context are not his job.
But challenging rhetoric with data points and context is most definitely the job of people who call themselves journalists. I don't want to turn this into yet another rant about how the Fourth Estate is dead and we Americans are simply not getting the information we need to be a properly functioning democracy. But the truth of it is - the Fourth Estate is dead and we American's are simply not getting the information we need to be a properly functioning democracy!
Letterman did his best. Better, perhaps, than i could have done, even though i read The Daily Kos and am supposedly so informed. Those of us paying attention may know who the villains are in this little fairy tale we call life, but it's not always so easy for us to explain what kind of poison they put in the apples.
Letterman ended up saying something along the lines of, "I don't know what it is exactly, but i think there's something wrong with your numbers." No David. You didn't know exactly, and neither did i. But we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Rand Paul was spewing garbage. Wouldn't it be nice if it wasn't the job of comedians and talk show hosts to call out deceit when it's staring them in the face? Isn't that supposed to be the job of our journalists?