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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
August 3, 2008
On the obvious
It is summer, I have noticed: hemispheric warming, and all that. I don’t get holidays in summer, because I take mine in spring. Still, even in the city it feels like summer. For one thing, it is very hot. And rather humid this year, don’t you think?I suppose this is fairly obvious. But as much as any journalist I know, in this town at least, I try consciously to specialize in the obvious. This could be dismissed as a kind of trick: a way to remain controversial, no matter what the topic. I am blessed to live at a time when the denial of the obvious has become the organizing principle of government and society. This makes my job so easy -- except for when I must defend myself against the zealots of “nuance.” Some young aspiring journalist -- obviously fishing for secrets of the trade -- asked me the other day in email: “Do you purposely say things that are outrageous?” “No,” I replied, “people are not so easy to shock, and these days everyone is used to the outrageous. Outrageous statements, and especially, outrageous half-truths and outright lies, will never ‘bring the ceiling down’. For if they did, politicians would never say them, let alone endlessly repeat them. Politicians, journalists, lawyers, university professors, and the other lower orders, constantly say the most outrageously untrue things, for the simple reason that they are so common, so uncontroversial. Nobody bats an eye. “No,” I continued, “if you really want to bring the house down, say something that is obviously true. But it has to be something everyone knows, at least in his heart; something that everyone is thinking -- subconsciously perhaps, but fairly near the surface. Be the first person to say aloud what everyone in the room is thinking, and then you may watch the ceiling come down.” There was a bit of bravado in this advice. Truth to tell, I am often at pains, when writing, to avoid the obvious. Very few people enjoy being in a room when the ceiling comes down. A university professor has told me, “A certain amount of discretion is necessary. You must say things in a way sufficiently cumbersome, that those who can handle the truth will get it, and those who can’t, will not.” This was his prescription for academic survival, in the age of the “politically correct.” Prudent advice, to be sure, but then one remembers the proverb of William Blake: “Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid, courted by Incapacity.” We (royal) ought consistently to seek the obvious truth. That is the calling. Why do we hesitate? Low motives easily suggest themselves. “I should like to keep my job. I should like to stay out of prison. I should like to avoid being hauled before another Press Council, or a Human Rights Tribunal. I should like to have a quiet life, and continue paying my spousal support. Things may seem bad sometimes, but they could be worse.” The cock crows thrice. There are saints, there are people who know that there are saints, and there are people who don’t know. One should aspire to rise at least to the middle condition. Not everyone is called to martyrdom, but everyone is called to witness. Even journalists. To witness what? To witness the news, or what appears to be news; to witness the unusual or significant; to describe or explain some aspect of current history. Getting the facts straight -- a far more difficult task than most readers or even journalists realize -- is one of those ethical absolutes. It is a precondition for truth, though not the truth itself. For it is easy to lie with all your facts straight. Try to draw what is right in front of your eyes, and you will begin to know how hard it is, to see what is right in front of your eyes. From the start, you must select from a limited repertoire of lines and shadings, to convey an infinitely complex scene. There is no easy way to draw or paint, and to match precisely the colour in a single fallen leaf would be the work of ages. Even the perfect mirror tells a lie (as I learned only this week). You think it is showing your face on its surface, full-size. But it is showing that face precisely half-size, no matter how near or far you stand away. (You can prove this by making marks with lipstick.) The reason is obvious if you think it through. (The image projected is at twice the distance.) Even what seems “literally true,” can be literally false. For paradoxically the obvious is not always obvious, and actually requires to be thought through. Hence, the tendency of all lists of “journalistic ethics” to trail off into farce and nonsense. Ethics are for people who have no morals -- no humility in the face of the good, the true, and the beautiful. To tell the truth, to capture the “ring of truth,” requires instead a form of hard-earned simplicity. Seeking the true means seeking the obvious. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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