Unreliable narrators pose a problem for the stories they tell. They make the world they depict for us, and we see that world through their eyes. In fiction, unreliable narrators betray themselves in a variety of ways or, to be more precise about it, they are betrayed by the writers who invented them. Unreliable narrators can be deceptive, but readers nevertheless slowly begin to doubt the narrator when contrary facts are revealed.
After more than a year of darkness and silence, the lights of the White House Press Briefing Room, without much warning, turned back on. The flat fluorescent light reveals the shadowless theater once again. Once again, video cameras have started to record the dialogue, as the discursive engines rumble back to life. In some ways, everything is the same as it ever was.
Jody Powell. James Brady. Marlin Fitzwater. Dee Dee Meyers. Ari Fleisher. To name a few. All typically deft in directing media attention toward one subject and away from others, setting the terms of journalistic conversation, while also shaping the rhetorical tenor and texture of the country’s business. Bundled into one job title, the press secretary acts as the president’s director of metaphor and plot, scriptwriter, and dramaturg.
So, there it is. In full megaphone mode. Heard from coast to coast and by all the ships at sea. The dog who once pricked up its ears at tantalizing whistles now winces-winces-winces under the bed with a hammer-on-anvil headache. Let the state-issued newsfeed proclaim without glitch or disconnect: on July 3, 2020, in the shadow of Mount Rushmore, near the small town of Keystone, South Dakota…
Gutzon Borglum had become, like Rodin, a de facto national sculptor. In 1925, the United States Mint, with the approval of Congress, issued a Stone Mountain commemorative silver half dollar to help fund the project. Borglum’s many other statues, celebrating various luminaries, some locally and some widely known, were raised in places as disparate as Portland, Oregon, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and Paris. He continued to be immune to the tensions that inhere in his projects and beliefs.
