If there’s been a consistent narrative to this year and every other in this decade, it’s that most of us ... have been so easily bamboozled. The men who played us for suckers, whether at Citigroup or Fannie Mae, at the White House or Ted Haggard’s megachurch, are the real movers and shakers of this century’s history so far. That’s why the obvious person of the year is Tiger Woods. His sham beatific image, questioned by almost no one until it collapsed, is nothing if not the farcical reductio ad absurdum of the decade’s flimflams, from the cancerous (the subprime mortgage) to the inane (balloon boy). ...
As cons go, Woods’s fraudulent image as an immaculate exemplar of superhuman steeliness is benign. His fall will damage his family, closest friends, Accenture and the golf industry much more than the rest of us. But the syndrome it epitomizes is not harmless. We keep being fooled by leaders in all sectors of American life, over and over. A decade that began with the “reality” television craze exemplified by “American Idol” and “Survivor” — both blissfully devoid of any reality whatsoever — spiraled into a wholesale flight from truth.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Sunday, December 20, 2009
THE Times' Frank Rich explains why Tiger Woods is the real "person of the year." A quotation:
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Is it that we're being deceived more, or just that people are finding out about more things in folks' personal life than before? Imagine if Kennedy or Johnson had been President in the era of TMZ? What if the media had reported on Michael Jordan's personal life? I'd say the story of the decade wouldn't be the Death of Truth, but the Death of News. Unless the Fourth Estate moves away from the tabloid stuff and starts uncovering problems like the subprime mortgage meltdown BEFORE they blow up then we're going to keep circling the drain.
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