It’s that time of year again – having to hide from lies on my television set

One of the rules of electoral politics people ought to keep in mind this time of the year is that all would-be officials spin. It’s not lying, although they want you to believe that everybody else’s spin is a lie and they tell nothing but the absolute truth.

Newman has some establishment backers

It doesn’t matter which candidate you support or which political party you back. Everything is described through the mindset the candidate wants you to adopt – which is that they’re wonderful and the problems lie with everybody else.

I COULDN’T HELP but think that as I went through my e-mail Tuesday morning and noticed a pair of messages that included video snippets of campaign commercials that will air on television in coming weeks.

One of them is about how wonderful Erika Harold is, and how we all ought to be casting our ballot in the Republican primary so we can pick her to be Illinois’ attorney general.

While the other is about how disgusting Marie Newman is. She’s the woman seeking the Democratic nomination for the Illinois Third Congressional district, wishing to take away the position from Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., on the grounds that he’s not liberal enough to be a Chicago-area congressman.

But as this ad tells us, Newman is really someone who won’t look out for the interests of people who work at Midway Airport, who has no real liberal credentials and, in fact, once ran a restaurant that was infested with fruit flies.

THE ACTUAL NEWMAN campaign is the one that rants about Lipinski not being a “real” Democrat because, on many social issues (most prominently abortion), he doesn’t side with the party platform. In fact, Lipinski is one of those individuals who’d just as soon see abortion become a criminal act.

Is ad a retort to this write-up?

Although he’s not likely to lead the charge for THAT cause. But he doesn’t side with a woman having a “right” to choose to terminate a pregnancy, which has many of the woman’s rights activists upset – and even has Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., publicly backing Newman.

That has the United for Progress group paying good money to air an ad that bashes Newman about. Since Lipinski is the only other choice (unless you want to take Republican Arthur Jones – a white supremacist activist – seriously), he becomes the benefactor.

HENCE, WE’RE HEARING allegations of foreign airlines taking over the slots at Midway, the inability of political operatives to find federal records for charitable funds Newman allegedly oversaw, and the health code violations at her one-time restaurant (with the tacky tales of fruit fly infestation).

The high-minded approach would be for someone to tout that Lipinski is one who consistently backs the interests of organized labor and unions – which is why he identifies as “Democrat” and most likely would be hostile to GOPers like Gov. Bruce Rauner.

Are these Dems of past the Lipinski backers?

But this is the campaign season – with Election Day less than two weeks away and some people (myself included) having already cast their ballots. Sickening fruit fly stories work better, I guess. Particularly since Newman got a nice write-up Monday on the New York Times’ front page. Is this ad a rebuttal tactic?

Although in terms of distortion of fact, I kind of find the Harold spot (one produced and paid for by her own campaign) to be more outrageous. Aside from constant references to the “Madigan machine,” it talks about how Harold in her life has “beat the odds” to win.

TO MY KNOWLEDGE, Harold actually has lost every single Republican primary she ever has run in (for Congressional seats from central Illinois).

The “victory” referred to that has her beating odds? It was in 2003 when the then-Miss Illinois went to Atlantic City and became Miss America. The last time an Illinois contestant won that competition.

I’m not going to say Harold is not allowed to cite her status as a former Miss America. But I’m also going to shout “Bull!” the next time she, or political operatives, try to lambast any Democrat who tries to trivialize her by saying she’s nothing but a former Miss America.

And as for “Madigan’s machine” that Harold supposedly would “hold accountable,” one could argue that what it has done is held Rauner accountable as governor – preventing him from imposing a series of anti-labor measures into law under the phony label of “reform.”

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“Shithole countries” controversy shows how we don’t agree on what is truth

The word has spread throughout our society about how President Donald J. Trump used a vulgar expression to describe certain countries around the world, many of which are on the African continent, as places where we ought to be discouraging the residents of even dreaming of immigration to the United States.

DURBIN: Speaking out against president

Trump made the so-called comments during a meeting he held last week to discuss potential immigration policy reform with members of Congress.

YET A MOVEMENT that has cropped up just as quickly, and one that is being taken up vehemently by some of an appropriate ideological bent, is a claim that Trump said no such thing.

There are those people in full support of this Age of Trump we’re in who say Trump didn’t say it. He didn’t say any such thing. It’s a fairy tale coming from people who can’t get with the program that Trump wants to present for our society.

The effort to discredit has become just as strong as the claim that Trump really was such a buffoon. Although perhaps not as intense as those neo-Nazis who, on the one hand, deny that the Holocaust ever occurred, but then engage in their jokes about how the ovens of Auschwitz were a fate too good for Jewish people.

My own thought, having not been present when the comments supposedly were made, is to admit that it is totally in character with Trump’s persona and past trash talk about so many issues to think he would use such a crude term – and probably really would think such a thing.

IF THAT MEANS I’m siding with Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. – who in recent days has become the most outspoken politician insisting that Trump really said it – then so be it.

Although I’m sure the kind of people who want to believe Trump are the ones who want to be critical of Durbin (who was present at the Trump session with Congressmembers) because he has long been a proponent of having our federal government do a significant overhaul of our national immigration policy.

The one that has so many glitches that can make it nearly impossible for some people to make it all the way through the naturalization process to U.S. citizenship.

TRUMP: Are his pants on fire?

Of course, those glitches are appreciated by the nativist element of our society – the ones who really don’t want anyone else being able to gain U.S. citizenship and are amongst Trump’s strongest supporters.

SO DID HE, or didn’t he, say “shithole?”

The ideologues amongst are going to insist he didn’t. I’ve lost track of the number of Facebook dialogues where people try to discuss the issue, only to have someone barge in with their rant that “It didn’t happen” as though they expect to be taken as the final word that ends the discussion.

The second-most common response I’ve encountered is for people to respond by saying the United States has portions that could be classified as “shitholes.” The only point for debate on that aspect is whether a “shithole” is Detroit, Baltimore or South Side Chicago.

Or rural Mississippi, Arkansas or West Virginia?

I’M CURIOUS TO know how long this particular debate will last. And will it be strong enough to be the major debate point of 2018? Or can Trump say something more absurd later this year that will overcome this. I find it hard to believe anything could top this.

Then again, when it comes to partisan political rhetoric, I suppose there is no limit as to how outrageous the cheap talk can get.

It may turn out that the Gallup Organization is the best barometer of public feeling. In their presidential approval rating, Trump had a 57 percent disapproval (compared to 38 percent approval) rating from the public.

So I suspect a majority of our society is inclined to believe Trump really could be that crude. And that there’s nothing anyone could say or do to convince Trump backers that he really did say it.

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What is relevant? What is truth?

I achieved a “first” this day. After nearly five months of publishing the Chicago Argus (and its sister site, “The South Chicagoan”), I deleted a reader’s comments that were attached to a piece of political analysis I wrote.

Now personally, I have a very loose attitude with regard to reader comments. I believe that when I write a commentary or analysis piece for the sites, I am having my say on the matter.

THEREFORE, I AM willing to let anyone who takes the time to read this site have their say – even if they have the “wrong” opinion (wrong being defined as anything that disagrees with me).

But in this particular case, I deleted someone’s attempt to attach a poem to the commentary I wrote for Tuesday as a preview of the Democratic primary elections held in Indiana and North Carolina.

The poem, in a sense, dealt with the election – it was a ditty entitled “Ode to Obama.” It was labeled as having been written by “Publius II.” Of course, the person who posted the commentary to my political analysis remained “anonymous.”

A check of Sitemeter, a service I use to give me some sense of how many (or few) people are actually reading my weblogs, could only tell me that the poster used a Comcast.net account to gain access to the Internet, and used an Internet Service Provider based out of Franklinville, N.J. Of course, that vague information could mean anything.

THE POEM ITSELF was fairly much half-witted trash (when the first verse’s rhyme is “drama” and “mama” and makes the point that Stanley Ann Dunham was “eccentric” because she didn’t date only white men, you can tell where it is going). The gist of the poem is to provide the Obama life story from the perspective of someone who thinks the Anglo perspective is the acceptable one, and that other perspectives are to be shoved aside.

Now if any of you really feel the need to read this, you should check out this link (http://donnadarko.wordpress.com/2008/05/06/ode-to-obama/). The exact same poem that was put on the Chicago Argus as a comment is posted at this weblog as an actual piece of commentary – not a response to someone else’s work.

I get the impression that someone is taking this trivial little poem and trying to spread it around the Internet. It wouldn’t shock me to learn it has been attached to many different sites in an attempt to spread the word that “real Americans said ‘FU’” to the concept of Obama as the next president of the United States.

Seriously, my commentary was posted Tuesday at 12:03 a.m. and the “comment” was added at 12:07 a.m. The anonymous poster who added the comment came to my site at 12:06 a.m., after having learned about the Chicago Argus through the Google search function that allows one to look only through weblogs for the phrase “Obama.”

NOW I MADE it clear early on in the campaign season that I cast my ballot in the Illinois primary for Obama, and I remain an Obama supporter. I disagree with the borderline racist sentiment expressed in this poem.

Nonetheless, had there been anything in it that related to the Indiana or North Carolina primaries, I likely would have allowed it to remain. Heck, when I wrote about an Indiana attorney campaigning in Illinois at a National Socialist rally in Chicago, I received a comment from someone informing me I was an “infidel” for taking the name of Adolf Hitler in vain. I left it in place.

This poem was just irrelevant – and long, it took up a ridiculous amount of space.

Now to the person who posted this comment, I’m sure they will get miffed for a moment and probably try to claim I am censoring their thought. No, I’m not. If anything, you are trying to censor my thought by trying to overpower my piece of commentary published on my site.

IF YOU REALLY think this poem was worthy of being published (and as noted above, there’s at least one weblog editor out there who thinks it is), then get your own site. Publish it. Highlight it. Come up with graphic elements to make it look nice and draw people to it.

I will vehemently support your right to do so and join you in a fight against anyone who tries to shut you down. That’s the American way. Don’t clutter my site with your ramblings, which in all likelihood, you didn’t even write (that’s a guess on my part – I don’t know who “Publius II” really is).

Now I’m sure some people are going to claim that I am particularly hard on this poem because I think its premise is offensive. I do think it is trite to try to lambast Obama because his life story doesn’t completely match up with yours.

But I learned early on in my just over two decades of professional life spent trying to chronicle and interpret the news and public affairs of the day that no matter what I write, there will always be someone out there who is convinced I am full of dog poop. There also will be people in complete agreement.

I REMEMBER A day about two weeks ago when I happened to be checking e-mail when someone used the e-mail address I provide on the Chicago Argus and The South Chicagoan to send me a lengthy rant telling me how ridiculous I was for writing pieces of commentary that acknowledge the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s view has some historic legitimacy.

The moment I finished reading that message, another e-mail came in from someone else, thanking me for writing the piece and acknowledging that African-American people come at some aspects of the United States from a different perspective than white people.

If I’m always going to be criticized by somebody regardless of what I write, I believe I am always better off just writing “the truth” as I see it. After all, this is a site offering commentary and analysis as provided by me – no one ever claimed the site to be anything more than that.

Besides, when it comes to “the truth,” we need to remember that it is subjective. Anybody who thinks anything can be reduced to a simple list of facts is being ridiculous. Everybody (including myself) colors “the facts” with their life perspective.

THAT’S ACTUALLY WHAT most of the so-called racial controversy surrounding Obama’s campaign is about. How severe was the racial harassment toward African-American people in this country’s past, and how much should we continue to be aware of that today. People who want to bash Obama with Wright want to think it not terribly significant.

At times like this, I think back to a course I took when I was a student at Illinois Wesleyan University. The course was in the proper technique for writing of historical papers, and we actually spent a significant amount of time acting as philosophers on the question of “What is Truth?”

The point eventually driven into our heads is that we had to take the perspective of the author of any historic “documents” into account, and not just accept something as hard fact because it was written on paper. We could accept it as fact that the person had an opinion – and here it is. But assuming that opinion bore resemblance to reality, that is a different matter.

Having to look at things in such a way can complicate the pretty pictures of life some people would like to portray. But I actually think that view has helped me in my time as a reporter and writer. It is a healthy skepticism intended to get to “the truth” behind somebody’s words.

SURPRISINGLY, IT IS a skepticism that some Journalism School-educated reporters never picked up (they want to report everything that comes from someone’s mouth or computer keyboard, regardless of how absurd it is).

There are times I think that if only Dr. Michael Young (the professor of history who taught me that course) could have a crack at educating the entire world in the concept of “What is Truth,” we’d all be better off.

At the very least, we’d all write a bit better – that man was a stickler for proper grammar, more so than any English professor I ever had.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: For those interested in reading Obama-related poetry, consider this. The Occidental Weekly (the student newspaper at the Los Angeles-area college where Barack Obama was once a student) dug through old archives and found poems (http://media.www.oxyweekly.com/media/storage/paper1200/news/2007/03/21/Features/Ode-To.Obama-2792052.shtml) written by Obama when he was just a college kid.