Posted 6:57 PM by Gene

I just came across a vile piece of PR -- pardon me -- doggie doo in USAOKAY!!!!! (I will not link to it as I posted the usual spit-in-a-fierce-wind comment) even as I was listening to a now-forgotten (unjustly forgotten) FDR campaign speech of '44 to the Teamsters -- the "Fala" speech. (Fala was FDR's dog, and a very good one.) In it, though likening the Republicans to our mortal enemies of the war (NO, GEORGE, you DIDN'T invent slander), he makes this otherwise searing observation:

The opposition in this year has already imported into this campaign a very interesting thing, because it is foreign. They have imported the propaganda technique invented by the dictators abroad. Remember, a number of years ago, there was a book, Mein Kampf, written by Hitler himself. The technique was all set out in Hitler's book - and it was copied by the aggressors of Italy and Japan. According to that technique, you should never use a small falsehood; always a big one, for its very fantastic nature would make it more credible - if only you keep repeating it over and over and over again. [Emphasis added]

He famously went on to say how Fala became a victim of Republican falsehoods. Whether the story is true or not it was hugely entertaining, and any falsehood was good-humored and harmless, and it made Fala almost as immortal in the canine world as the dog not named Toto.

Since Fala news hacks have improved on Hitler's technique by cultivating so many small falsehoods for so many different kinds of untruth they become a very fantastically big one -- which they can repeat over and over and over again.

How did this get to be the MO of Al Neuharth? How did this get to be the MO of NEWS HACKS?

P. S. FDR's death broke Fala's heart. We would not be broken-hearted if most news hacks would parade single file off a cliff in the Grand Canyon.