The key to the original piece was an interesting bit of semantic spinning. In order to debunk the myth, the writer first altered the myth in order to create a bit of wiggle room.
I'll summarize quickly: The piece's position was that we all remember Cruise jumping on Oprah's couch. What "jumping" meant for Nicholson was what we non-professionals call "jumping up and down." Cruise did not jump-up-and-down but he did "leap" or "hop" or "spring" onto the couch. To be most precise, he propelled himself with both feet into a crouching position on the sofa.
Nicholson expected the reader to believe something about the public's beliefs. We were to understand that the public believed Cruise jumped-up-and-down on Oprah's couch like a child on a hotel bed. She then commanded us to look at the tape and see that he did not jump-up-and-down. Thus, our understanding of Cruise was faulty and thus her new narrative was the correct one.
It's a strangely sophisticated version of the Internet's favorite fallacy, the straw man. Sophisticated because it's supposed to operate within the listener's mind--the listener has a myth of Tom Cruise, the writer reshapes that myth and then disproves it. "You believe this, and you're wrong."
As we move more stridently into a media-saturated culture, expect to see more and more of this. Pay particular attention to our conception of "The Fifties," which is morphing farther and farther from reality.
The original, Baby Boomer conception of The Fifties was a boring time of conformity, an era that wished to stifle all that's potent in free in mankind. As far as our current chattering masses are concerned, The Fifties are America's equivalent to Nazi Germany, the culmination of all of the nation's racism, sexism and capitalism, and the decade of which we should always be ashamed.
But the technique is more succinctly displayed in NYT's article of last week, How Gary Hart’s Downfall Forever Changed American Politics, by Matt Bai. Here's the relevant excerpt:
The Hart episode is almost universally remembered as a tale of classic hubris. A Kennedy-like figure on a fast track to the presidency defies the media to find anything nonexemplary in his personal life, even as he carries on an affair with a woman half his age and poses for pictures with her, and naturally he gets caught and humiliated. How could he not have known this would happen? How could such a smart guy have been that stupid?The first question: How important to the Hart myth is it that he challenged reporters to discover his illicit acts? Is that the core of the story? Or is the story about how a presidential front-runner shot himself in the foot by cavorting with women during his campaign?
The key to this kind of semantic manipulation is blowing up a minor detail into a major, disprovable one. Bai is irrelevantly focused on Hart's "challenge" to the press. Here's the oft-repeated quote:
[NYT reporter E.J.] Dionne discussed a broad range of topics with Hart and then reluctantly turned to the rumors of affairs. Hart was exasperated and he finally told Dionne: “Follow me around. I don’t care. I’m serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They’d be very bored.”Bai seems to think that it's important that Hart said this to Dionne, not the Miami Herald reporters who uncovered his affair. Is that an important distinction when discussing Hart's downfall?
The Herald reporters published a front-page article about Hart’s purported affair. At the end, they referred to a statement in which Hart challenged reporters interested in his personal life to follow him. Hart couldn’t have known it at the time, but his words — “follow me around” — would shadow him for the rest of his days. They would bury everything else he had ever said in public life.As it turns out, the NYT article with Hart's "follow me around" quote was published the same day as the expose about his affair. Bai doesn't want to admit that this means that Hart was sleeping with Donna Rice at the time he was being interviewed by Dionne.
Hart said this in an annoyed and sarcastic sort of way, in an obvious attempt to make a point. He was “serious” about the sentiment, all right, but only to the extent that a man who had been twice separated from his wife and dated other women over the years — with the full knowledge of his friends in the press corps and without having seen a single word written about it at the time — could have been serious about such a thing. Hart might as well have been suggesting that Martians beam down and run his campaign, for all the chance he thought there was that any reporter would actually resort to stalking him.Oh, you see, Hart said it but he didn't mean it.
The difference here is far more than a technicality. Even when insiders and historians recall the Hart episode now, they recall it the same way: Hart issued his infamous challenge to reporters, telling them to follow him around if they didn’t believe him, and then The Herald took him up on it. Inexplicably, people believe, Hart set his own trap and then allowed himself to become ensnared in it. (When I spoke to Dana Weems [who tipped off The Herald], she repeatedly insisted to me that she had only called The Herald after reading Hart’s “follow me around” quote, which was obviously impossible.)Is this the least bit important? At the very least, Hart's challenge to the press was a lip service, an easy lie that he never expected to be outed.
Hart had a credibility issue before the Rice fiasco. Dionne asked him about the affairs--however "reluctantly"--because this was on the public's mind.
The fact of the matter is that Hart's greatest political weakness was his rumored infidelity. Even knowing this, he expected the press to cover for him as he donned a "Monkey Business" sweatshirt and posed with a young, leggy woman on his lap.
Bai would like us to question--for God knows what reason--whether it's reasonable to condemn a politician for infidelities. However, he won't simply come out and say it; he's more content to make us feel stupid for believing some insignificant detail about the narrative.
He also wants to make the players look stupid. There's a great deal of character assassination at work in his descriptions of Dana Weems and Herald reporter Tom Fiedler. The latter is a bumbler and the former a delusional harpy.
The saddest part of the article is that it could have made for a very funny story if Bai wasn't so hung up on defending Hart and making a case that it's okay for presidents to commit adultery. The whole situation is stupid and smarmy and pathetic. The description of Hart facing the Herald's reporters (after escorting Rice and friends out the back door) is particularly funny.
As it turns out, the funniest thing about the article is that it seems to be calling for a more complacent press. The days of Watergate-era swashbuckling (or at least the media's self-congratulation of such) are definitely over.
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