Monday the 18th of January, 2010  

A conversation about the conversation.

“…and of course, it totally plays into the Republican party’s whole ‘welfare state’ narrative.”

“Hey, can I ask you something?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you stop using that word? ‘Narrative’? Can you stop — for the love of god — stop using that word? Because you’re hurting the conversation. It is not an honest word. It sounds like it is, and you’re certainly using it accurately, but you’re not helping anyone when you use it. Because whenever you say ‘narrative’, you’re not saying ‘lie’. And you should be saying ‘lie’, because the Republicans aren’t experts at ‘crafting a narrative’, they’re experts at lying.”

“I don’t get what you’re sayi-“

“Time was, you used to be able to go on television and — if someone was lying — you could just say ‘they’re lying to you. They are making things up.’ But now, for some stupid attempt at civility and high-mannered loquaciousness, we’re saying ‘they’re constructing a narrative’ or ‘this plays right into their narrative’. We’re actually attempting to spin our criticism of other people’s spin. That’s insane.”

“Well, it’s not hurting anyo-“

“Of course it is, you asshole. Because if you don’t tell people they’re being lied to, they’ll go along with what they’re told, and you get Tea Parties, and ‘death panels’, and morons from Alaska using a news organization as a platform for a presidential bid.

“Nobody wants to believe a lie once it’s been pointed out to them. But a ‘narrative’? People love narratives. They go to the movies to indulge in someone else’s narrative, they read books to shoot narratives straight into their bloodstream. People like narratives because narratives are the lies they’re allowed to believe. So we need to stop saying that the Republicans deal in narrative. We need to be honest. We need to tell people that they deal in lies.”

“Recess is nearly over.”

“Shit. I haven’t even started on my juicebox.”