To Bill Bradley from Bilbo Baggins:
As a typical news paper’s commentator you list “facts” that have as a goal to provoke suspense and a pleasant sensation of approaching catastrophe. I understand that you don’t have time to analyze the facts which should demonstrate the objectivity of your “opinion”. I don’t speak about uncertainty of the concept of “fact”: it is another topic. An example of your catastrophic fact’s catalogue: “Crashing property values. A worldwide credit crunch. Wall Street bailouts. Record oil prices. Record gasoline prices. Rising unemployment. The dollar at a record low against the euro. … The Afghan fight has been going increasingly poorly over the past two years.” As in a suspense novel (I confess I detest this popular genre) you create the sensation of the nearing collapse of the entire World.
I’ll take only two facts from your black list: euro and Afghanistan. “Low” dollar and “high” euro mean a negative situation for the European economics: inflations, unemployment and decreasing of exportations. You can see European panic in economic news papers. I’m European. I know it from my personal experience. For example: to buy the books of good editions in the US costs me much less than in any European country. So if I have choice I buy books in the US and not in Europe. I image that less rich countries than Europe, prefer to buy American goods and not European thanks to “low” dollar. So your statement about dollar and euro has a value of an abstract “fact” without the contents.
Afghanistan. In 7 lines you tell the story of Afghanistan from the Soviet invasion up to present days with which you finish your “reportage” from “La planète des singes”. I should say that Pierre Boulle’s novel gives much more information even about Afghanistan than many American and European papers.
Polls. You use polls as objective facts. In our “scientific” times polls have replaced astrology. The kings and all ancient politicians, before begining any important busyness, asked their official astrologers which consulted the planets. So the astrology was a very serious and “objective” science, based on the observation of the movements of the celestial corps and not on capricious “opinions” of “average” individuals. So if I had to make a choice between polls and astrology I would choose astrology. Fortunately, I am not a news paper’s writer or politician. So I need not make this choice. It would be interesting to know what American astrologers say about… about the possibility of a gay becoming US President. Why not, if St. Obamus (who, as some say, makes miracles) has all probabilities to realize his father’s dream?
