We are living in the golden age of bullsh*t

By now you’ve surely seen and/or heard a lot about Senator Katie Britt’s audition for Real Housewives of Tuscaloosa Official GOP response to the State of the Union. At the very least you probably saw the Saturday Night Live cold open version of it.

Aside from Britt’s breathy regional theater performance, her ‘fundie baby’ voice, and the brutalist Dexter-like kitchen she was sitting in, the part that’s getting the most attention is her highly embellished story about sex trafficking.

By now we know that this story, while technically true, is wildly and intentionally misleading. The incidents Britt refers to happened in Mexico during the George W. Bush administration. And though the story is tragic, it has exactly nothing to do with US immigration policy then or now, let alone the Biden administration. [1]

Britt was counting on nobody putting two and two together (probably because in Alabama very few people can do basic math). But a reporter named Jonathan Katz thought something about this story did not add up, so he looked into it. His video response to this went viral. 

Katz all, folks

Katz is a long-time reporter and proprietor of The Racket, a blog about politics. He got more than a little attention last year for his story in The Atlantic, “Substack Has a Nazi Problem,” which resulted in a handful of folks deserting that platform, including yours truly. (Last time I looked, most of the Nazis and their goose-stepping friends were still there.)

Though Katz is a talented investigative reporter, this did not require extensive research. As he writes:

I was watching live, and this anecdote immediately struck me as odd….Who was this trafficking victim? What side of the border did these crimes happen on? When did they happen?... I’d like to say that it took hours of exhaustive, painstaking research to answer all those questions. The reality is it took about twenty minutes…. It also turned out that Britt had been telling—and usually misrepresenting—this story over and over again, for more than a year, with no one calling her out on it.

So, for months on end, Britt had been dining out on this story and nobody even blinked. This may fly in Alabama, where lead paint is considered one of the four basic food groups and human popsicles have more rights than fully grown women [2]. On a national stage, not so much. At least, not now.

Here’s the SNL version of this, featuring Scarlett Johansson [3]:  

There are three things about this that are notable to me. One is that Katz proves again that a) good journalism matters, and b) most mainstream journalists are unfortunately quite lazy. Another is that the reason this went viral is that, in addition to writing about it, he recorded a video on Tik Tok. Had this been a story in the NY Times or Washington Post or just another post on his own blog, we wouldn’t all be talking about this right now. 

The third thing is how effective lies can be as a framing device. Even if you strapped down Britt’s supporters and force fed them the facts, they will still see a 12-year-old girl “in a shoebox of a room,” being repeatedly raped by scary brown men, and they will blame Biden for it. The details of the story ultimately don't matter; the emotional imprint it leaves behind is what counts.

As Katz writes:

Given that Britt and other members of her movement generally feel no pressure from the media or voters to get their facts straight, or to even provide evidence justifying their arguments about immigration and borders in general, it’s no surprise that she would so blatantly mischaracterize an easily findable story like Jacinto’s. She had good reason to expect that no one would check it.

Lying for fun and profit

I was thinking about this while reading a story today about another bullshit artist who until recently was a very useful tool for Republican members of Congress, as well as a paid FBI informant. The Washington Post had an illuminating story about this gentleman, whose name (allegedly) is Alexander Smirnov. 

Smirnov was the super-secret source for Republicans’ claim that both Hunter and Joe Biden received $5 million bribes for something-something-Burisma-Ukraine-Bad. He was their ace in the hole, the key to blowing the scandal wide open. Except, of course, there is no scandal. [4] And now it turns out that Smirnov himself is essentially a con man, with a long history of sordid dealings ranging from penny stock mining companies to dubious crypto startups, plus a string of unpaid loans and fake addresses. Per the Post:

While mostly based in California, Smirnov led a peripatetic life that, according to court documents, included frequent foreign travel to Ukraine, Israel and various European countries. …He told the court that he lived at an address in San Francisco. But Erin Brady, a lawyer for the company who later became a deputy attorney general with the California Department of Justice, quickly informed the court that the address corresponded not to a home but to a traffic median.

Depending on the neighborhood, a traffic median in San Francisco could run you upwards of $2K a month. [5]

This is hardly a new phenomenon. If you’re old like me, you might remember that Weapons of Mass Destruction line of BS Dick Cheney and friends used to get us into the war in Iraq. Back then, our nation’s intelligence agencies were relying on a confidential informant who claimed that Saddam Hussein was making chemical weapons, in violation of international law. The nom du spy for this source was “Curveball.”

At the time, foreign intelligence services and the CIA’s own head of European operations said the man’s information was not to be trusted. Didn’t matter. Having someone make the accusation was all they really needed. Nine years later, Curveball (real name: Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi) admitted he made it all up. An estimated 500,000 people died because of those lies.

Katie Britt, Alexander Smirnov, Rafid al-Janabi. All members of the professional liars club. It doesn’t matter how flimsy these lies are, or how quickly they melt under scrutiny. It doesn’t matter whether the people who benefit from spreading these lies even believe they’re true. All that matters is for the lies to last long enough to make it to cable news, so that enough people will cling to them, no matter how ridiculous they sound.

Would you lie for a good cause? How about a bad one? Share your biggest whoppers in the comments below.

[1] The sex trafficking victim in question, Karla Jacinto, is none too pleased with Katie Britt either.

[2] I feel bad for the 37 percent of people in Alabama who did not vote for Donnie Demento in 2020 and must be really tired of being lumped with their in-bred neighbors. Alabama ranks 47th among US states and territories for people having a college degree, and 39th among those with graduate degrees (the higher ranking is probably thanks to the Marshall Space Flight Center being located in Huntsville). Apologies to any readers who are Alabama residents and don’t see The Handmaid’s Tale as a how-to manual.

[3] You know that, deep down, Britt is thrilled that SNL chose someone as hot as Scarlett to portray her. It’s a greater accomplishment than being elected senator from Alabama, where a three-legged dog has a decent shot at winning, as long as it’s the right color. 

[4] And, aside from a few dick-pic selfies, not much on Hunter’s magic laptop, either. 

[5] For a one bedroom apartment in San Francisco, the actual median price is $2,190. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)