Warm praise for prevaricator

By Luke Warm

Professor of Mendacity

University of Munchausen

Students! We are halfway through the coursework in this class, Deceptive Prevarication 101, and I would like to interrupt my lecture today so that we can reflect upon and admire one of the finest examples of public duplicity I have seen in lo these many years.

First, though, as always here at good ol’ U of M, we must define our terms in such a way as best to obfuscate, mislead and generally muddy the waters.

Therefore, I will define “public duplicity” as that process by which private individuals seeking their own unenlightened self-interest insert grand lies into the schemata of reality.

By “schemata of reality,” I choose to mean the entire skein of public perception, i.e., e.g. viz., ad infinitum, the very fabric of popular consciousness.

By “popular consciousness,” I select this definition: What people think is true whether it be so or not.

It is into this very network of cognition that we public prevaricators insert our shards of nonsense.

By “public prevaricator,” I mean those of us who consciously seek to alter the general mental state of a city, region, state, nation and the entire globe or maybe universe, hopefully, by our devious fulminations of pseudo-facts and outright lies.

By “shards of nonsense,” I simply mean those fragments of merde supreme in which we grands bullshitteurs of the dark side are wont to delve.

By “dark side,” I mean quite frankly that we, pure and simple, promulgate our lies in hopes of having our own profitable way in the public discourse.

By “public discourse” — but enough of definition!

On with the praise.

Today’s prize goes to one Matt Moroun, son of trucking and bridge tycoon Manuel “Matty” Moroun, himself one of the finest blowers of smoke the universe has seen.

The Morouns get plenty of help from mainstream media outlets which, ostensibly in the interest of fairness, aid and abet us mendacious types by publishing as credible fact the sheerest crapola that we reel up from the depths of our creepy imaginations.

“Fairness” and “balance” are the two most basic tools we disseminators of hype and journalistic flatus have.

With “fairness” and “balance,” concepts that have been pumped into the brains of journalists by professors like me but with different portfolios, we can let the professional journalists do our heavy lifting.

A wonderful example of such leverage was presented by CNN in its report on the Morouns’ bridge monopoly. Of course, to be fair, following fundamental journalistic protocol, the reporters had to speak to the Morouns. And then, of course, having listened to the bridge moguls’ endless line of tripe — indeed, the Moroun bridge monopolists have developed their style of mudslinging bunk to the absolute highest level and are for that fact to be highly admired — CNN simply dumps the Moroun load into their text as if the listener should accept at face value this monument to apocrypha.

Listen carefully, as I slowly read the CNN line that has sparked my unqualified admiration:

“We’re doing our best to fight a government takeover of a private business that wants to spend private dollars in Detroit,” says Matt Moroun.

The key words are “government takeover of a private business.”

A little background: In Detroit, there is a big debate going on about whether the governments of Canada and the United States, Michigan and Ontario, should construct a new bridge to replace a dilapidated and antiquated span known as the “Ambassador Bridge” and owned by Matt Moroun’s dad, the billionaire bridge monopolist, Manuel “Matty” Moroun.

What Moroun fils is trying to make the public believe is that the government wants to own his dad’s bridge.

But truth to tell, and I must tell it now and then when it suits my purpose, no government would want to possess a piece of junk that has not been maintained in many years and that is incapable of handling the current flow of traffic without horrendous backups.

The Ambassador Bridge would be a liability to any public entity that took it over. It would be a financial quagmire with a constant and growing list of costly repairs.

Matt Moroun’s comment about a government takeover is thus sheer, wondrous baloney. The fantasy of a government takeover of the Ambassador Bridge has been entertained in only one place: Here on JOTR.

That is correct. Yes, once in a while we professors of mendacity say true things. It is true that the proprietor of this site has from time to time called for governments to send bulldozers to reclaim city of Detroit-owned property illegally seized by Matty Moroun, and the proprietor of JOTR has actually called for government to condemn and seize the Ambassador Bridge itself.

No government has jumped at that opportunity.

But amazingly, Matt Moroun seems to think JOTR had a worthy idea and that there is some danger that his family’s bridge monopoly will be seized.

Students, en garde! We are drifting into a sea of fiction contrived by the Morouns. Ship oars! Steer straight, eyes dead ahead, lest we be deceived like the general public into believing that the Morouns think the government wants to own their ramshackle bridge.

As we speceialists in art of media manipulation are well aware, they are simply inserting flim-flam into the public debate.

But they have done it so deftly, and CNN bit on it so hard and promulgated it far and wide, that people may be excused for forming the idea that a takeover is a legitimate possibility.

Now, it may well be that the Morouns have an unperceived dual purpose here. Perhaps their intent is to float into reality the notion that government might seize the bridge, pay them a huge price and remove this rundown piece of property from their inventory.

Either way, they have scored true success as measured by my patented formula Mf = cM x Gp, where Mf is the force of Mendacity, cM is media credibility and Gp is public gullibility.

Hats off to the Morouns! Wonderful job of pulling the wool over the media’s eyes.

With a little luck, readers and viewers will swallow this whopper whole, and the Morouns will have succeeded once again in blurring our perception of them.