By Dominique Paul Noth
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| Dolan receiving Milwaukee social justice award |
We’ve entered strange times when New York Cardinal Timothy
Dolan shows a shrewder grasp of marketing
language and more skill at semantic manipulation than either Gov. Scott Walker
or those hired wordsmiths of the Journal-Sentinel PolitiFacts team.
It was in Milwaukee as archbishop that Dolan polished his
ability to play all sides of the class warfare strata, spouting conservative
rhetoric backing GOP style politics while supporting -- in newsletters and
award ceremonies at least -- the church’s traditional progressive vision of social
justice.
That’s a talent he has deepened as leader of the US bishops.
Now he adroitly encourages media quotes on the horrors of the Affordable Care Act (opposing contraception despite those lavish religious exemptions) yet
quietly backtracks in other statements to support the ACA as helping Americans
to better health care. If this is a
selective and sanctimonious word game, how would you describe any politician’s
campaign platform?
More recently Dolan has used the techniques of an
infomercial pitchman to explain why gay marriage is on the upswing against his
own bishops’ statements and actions. (In
state after state, 16 so far, many with high Catholic populations, full
marriage rights for gay partners have become the law of the land, with more on
the horizon.)
Catholics, he suggests, were falsely painted as “anti-gay”
and had been “out-marketed” by “Hollywood” and vague “opinion-makers.” It is typical Dolan shrewdness – and probably
fair to let him have his say in a breaking news story, where readers can see
the holes in his argument and decide for themselves. It is in analysis, the
sort of digging into the facts that PolitiFacts is supposed to be about, that a
different picture should emerge.
Since PolitiFacts hasn’t and probably won’t dissect Dolan,
we will. As a reporter who actually interviewed Dolan, I know exactly what sort
of misdirection he is up to – and it’s not quite what leaders of SNAP (the Survivors Network
of Abused by Priests) are saying, that he is deflecting
attention from the church’s pedophilia problem. He’s actually carving a public
relations narrative of his own – that the church is not against gays or anyone,
but has been outmaneuvered for the time being by clever opponents.
The hole is obvious. Dolan
has creatively ducked the central issue in a democratic society -- human rights
– by suggesting this is all about better salesmanship. But religions abandoned exclusive
control of the word “marriage” over centuries of letting secular powers determine
who gets licensed to marry or perform the ceremony.
Blood tests, documents, elected or appointed officials as
well as delegated religious leaders are all equally engaged and approved by
secular regulation – and it goes deeper. Marriage had been legally limited in
definition, in obeisance to dominant religions in the US, as between one man
and one woman. To back that up, all manner of legal rights – tax laws, inheritance,
hospital visits and dozens more in regulations – were embedded in the process. Only now is
the public catching on, thanks to activists. It’s dawned that such constricting
legal binds have turned the word “marriage” into a “human right” far more than
a religious term for a sacrament or ritual.
Dolan knows the church can’t win that debate in a free
society, so he claims the church is losing to smarter PR rather than on a moral ground.
If this were PolitiFacts, which analyzes news statements for
accuracy and attempts to rate the truth or consequences, Dolan’s explanation would require a robust discussion of semantic
trickery and historic rationale. But Wisconsin
PolitiFacts team, a curious mix of
journalists and political mouthpieces, dodges and weaves when it comes to
calling out Walker.
The gov now spends most of his time AWOL -- out of state pitching
hay in the presidential sweepstakes. And he’s getting away with slick evasion in
studio interviewers with TV talking
heads pretending to be journalists. Perhaps they can be excused for not knowing
the ins and outs of his behavior in Wisconsin, allowing him to say he is not
about hot-button social issues but focused on economic policies. At least it
sounds to the uninitiated that he’s not vindictive on matters of women, marriage,
worker rights and voter ID.
But what can possibly be PolitiFacts’ excuse for letting him
say that? They know the real Walker intimately, as well as his statistically
provable ineptitude on the fiscal
success he’s pitching.
It is Wisconsin journalists who have studied his whole career
who should be stepping up immediately when he plays fast and loose in those studios
and podiums far away. They know how heavily he has engaged in vaginal probe
laws for women, against equal pay initiatives, opposing any municipality having
better rules on wages or sick pay, forcing poor families off Medicaid and so
forth. They know how only while campaigning for president has he backed away from
taking a position on issues he has privately supported, such as abstinence-only
sex ed in schools, demeaning mascot
names and right to work legislation.
There is a movement afoot to have Amazon place Walker’s
“Unintimidated” in the fiction bin where it belongs. But his co-authored version of his reign as
governor will not be heavily marketed in Wisconsin in any case. There are too
many citizens, politicians -- and journalists -- who can tell the real stories.
Not PolitiFacts, apparently.
Local journalists
should jump all over the sales myth he is hawking outside the state. Yet JS amply
discusses all these fables he pitches on the national campaign trail as news
stories and in analyses don’t even
trot out its standard “Pants on Fire” or
even the bizarre label “Half True” (why not half false?). Admittedly, these half
and half labels have become a PolitiFacts safety valve to avoid
offending advertisers, using fine print
loopholes so that a statement that is completely true to the knowledgeable
public can be labeled half true to avoid
upsetting conservative readers – especially if Mary Burke said it.
But the kicker came when Walker discussed his opposition to
gay marriage and PolitiFacts treated it as an “In Context” discussion -- as if
simply explaining on behalf of Scott how
he never intended to sound so extreme on gay marriage. It was quite a show
since PolitiFacts usually pounces when a politician stands the dictionary on its
ear.
Walker said he was merely following a state amendment (not
mentioning how heavily it is under legal attack), yet the newspaper ignored the
recent past when he gave full-throated
support against gay marriage, defending one man-one woman because it worked with
voters. They also know through the John Doe probe he openly hired the sort of gay staff members who can be arrested while
opposing hospital visitation rights for gay couples.
To allow him to describe his current position as “a healthy balance” between opposing camps is sheer
nonsense that should have been nailed. All
this turns PolitiFacts into a bigger joke and a deeper stain on objective journalism than it
was. And reminds readers that the worst
mumbo-jumbo of labels or non-labels defending Walker can be traced back to one writer.
But frankly politics shouldn’t matter. PolitiFacts is supposed to analyze and probe
independently, opposing any fudging from any quarter -- rather than allowing more fudging. It would be wrong if they protected Obama. What
they are doing to let Walker off the
hook is shameful.
The author is a former
senior editor at The Milwaukee Journal and recent editor of the Milwaukee Labor
Press.
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