How I’ll get truth from politicians

Long before Joe Biden concocted the idea of combating “disinformation,” I was leading the charge against this pernicious practice. It’s true.

I was a pioneer in the antidisinformation movement, even before Mark Zuckerberg hired his first fact-checker or those Twitter content moderators censored their first tweets.

Let me explain. Back before the Internet was a gleam in Al Gore’s eye, I’d be sitting in the newsroom, minding my own business, eating my Italian combo with prosciutto and provolone, looking for a scandal to uncover or an expose that would outrage the Western World, not to mention the Eastern World.

Or perhaps I was preparing for our next layoff ... when suddenly, the Vice P2⁄3resident of Advertising, panting and perspiring, flustered and frightened, burst through the time-honored wall separating the news department from the advertising department.

“Ad people are breaching the newsroom!” screamed reporters, running for cover. I immediately went into my peacekeeper mode and tried to prevent rioting.

The VP of Advertising informed me that his department had just made a big, big sale, which meant we might not need layoffs that month. But there was a catch. They wanted us to review the political ads to make sure they didn’t contain any “disinformation” that could destroy democracy.

“Is this ad from the Republicans correct?” he asked. “Did the Democratic candidate for Grand Poobah really put his Cavalier King Charles Spaniel on the town payroll?”

“Hmmm, we better check that before PETA scoops us,” I replied. “Sounds like dog abuse to me. Besides, no king should hold public office in America. It threatens our democracy.”

“AND did the Republican candidate for first selectman get political contributions from a descendant of the Czar of Russia, who’s living in exile in backcountry Greenwich?”

“Hmmm, that’s even more terrifying. This could undermine our entire political system, or what’s left of it.” (Decades before the mainstream media exposed Russian collusion, I was on the case.)

Over the years, I learned that when it comes to politics, practically nothing is impossible, and practically nothing is believable ... and even the believable stretches the truth beyond recognition. You see, politics relies on an innate ability to contort the truth.

As that notorious Roman politician Pontius Pilate once said, “What is truth?”

And as Mark Twain famously observed, “An honest man (or woman) in politics shines more there than he would elsewhere.”

But back to Joe Biden’s newly constituted Disinformation Governance Board, which will be run by Democrats, who fear that Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, is actually a Republican agent on the Putin payroll.

To be honest, or as honest as I’m capable of being, I admit that I’m tired of wasting so much time trying to figure out which party tells the truth and which party is a pack of liars. I’ve given serious consideration to this sad state of affairs and come up with several possible solutions that would work better than a Disinformation Governance Board.

First, I urge the president to issue an executive order, requiring national lie detector tests for anyone who lists their occupation as “professional politician,” and there are many who are long overdue for retirement.

I thought the tests could be administered by the Department of Homeland Security, but having the government involved will call the test results into question, so maybe the Dalai Lama, Eckhart Tolle or Pope Francis can administer them.

It seems that the people who are always running around like Chicken Little, screaming about disinformation, are often the ones practicing it, so lie detectors are the only reasonable solution. I’d also love to have Mark Zuckerberg take a test, not to mention Elon Musk, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and perhaps Chelsea, Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Hunter Biden and all of Congress ... but I digress.

Ordinary Americans are the only ones who can save democracy — not politicians. Like most Americans, I really don’t want to endure another round of demagoguery known as campaigning.

Now, before government agents swoop down on me in their black helicopters, I want to say these are only my uneducated opinions, which are much less harmless than outright lies, so please don’t send the thought police to take me away.