The best lies are true.
At least, they are factually true. I mean, you spout off some out-and-out falsehood, like say, “I didn’t send that photo,” and no matter how passionately you repeat it, or how condescending you are to anyone who dares to question you, pretty soon some jerk with a website and his own correction alpaca is bound to come along and reveal some actual evidence of your utter lack of honesty and chest-hair.
Peter Guber with Fidel Castro
But when you lie with facts, you lie with the confidence that the rug can never be completely pulled out from under you by simple evidence. A factual lie is a lie of context. It is a nuanced lie. And context and nuance don’t make for good headlines.
This week, in an appearance on America’s Nightly Scoreboard on the Fox Business Channel, media mogul Peter Guber weighed in on Ben Shapiro’s scathing new exposé of liberal bias in Hollywood, PRIMETIME PROPAGANDA and told a whopper of a factual lie.
Watch the latest video at video.foxbusiness.com
GUBER: “…I don’t think anybody doesn’t get hired or doesn’t get, or doesn’t get their job or keep their job because they’re Republican or Tea Partier or conservative. I mean, I’m a Republican, and I’ve done pretty good in the business.”
This is pretty surprising news to the interviewer, David Asman, who replies with, “Gee, I didn’t… I never knew that about you.”
Gee, I didn’t either.
In fact, it seems virtually inconceivable that the host of Sunday Morning Shootout, a show that appeared to exist expressly so that the biggest names in Hollywood could have a weekly chance to vomit Bush hate for five years, could be a Republican, but it turns out it’s true.
Except that it’s not.
You see, as much as it may surprise the Meghan McCains of the world, being a Republican is more than just registering to vote in the GOP primaries. Being a Republican means believing what Republicans believe.
Now, I’m not talking about strict ideological conformity. People are individuals and complete doctrinal purity is rare in any belief system.
But there are some basics.
Being Jewish, for example, means believing in Judaism – that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob made a covenant with the people of Israel and gave them the Law of Moses and the land of promise as an everlasting possession. Sure, there are places where Jews might disagree with each other about morality and law, but if you don’t believe in God and His promise, you’re not really a Jew, no matter what you call yourself. Right?
Well, like the JINOs – Jews in Name Only – Peter Guber may call himself a Republican, he may even be registered as one, but Peter Guber is not a Republican.
See, I suspect just about any Republicans, no matter where they find themselves in the Big Tent, from militant libertarian to compassionate conservative to momma grizzly, probably think this is disqualifying:
PETER GUBER – “[Bill Clinton] was a young candidate running for President in the first term. I was the Chairman of Sony at that time, the CEO. We were really interested in him because we liked what he had to say about education.
My wife and I invited him and some of his staff when he was the Governor of Arkansas to come to California and talk about and speak with different constituencies on the West Coast about his mission, his passion in education.
The result of that was that we created a relationship. I was a more conservative person. I wasn’t, I would say, a Liberal Democrat. But I was really moved by his passion and his power and his ability to put me in the boat with him, to put me in the story with him, to make me a character in his story.
So I began to support him and began to see that he would be effective as a leader. So what really happened was somewhere in the early campaign, I think it was — and again, the power of a story is you remember the story, but the facts and figures can sometimes dim. But I don’t remember whether it was the first or the second campaign. I think he had come in second or third in New Hampshire, and they thought he was going to win, and he didn’t have the economic wherewithal to move the campaign from New Hampshire, and I think it was to Wisconsin. Again, it could have been Montana or it could have been — it was 25 years ago, or whatever it was.
But it was to move his campaign. And I got a call from one of his Chiefs of Staff and said, “Peter, we need the money. We need this money, a certain amount of money from a certain number of people to move our campaign to the next stop. We absolutely need it.”
I said, “Wow. How much?” He said, I think it was $90,000. $1,000 [sic] a person for 45 people. I said, “Okay. Well, when do you need it by?” “By 5:00 today.” I said, “By 5:00 today, are you crazy?” He said, “Yeah, we absolutely need it.”
Clinton grabbed the phone and said, “Peter, let me tell you . . .” He didn’t say let me tell you a story, he said, “Let me tell you, it’s High Noon. You know the movie ‘High Noon’?” “Yeah.” He says, “The bad guys are coming, the train’s coming, I got to get everything organized, and this is my big chance, and you gotta stand with me at high noon.”
I said, “Okay. I got it.” And I used that story forward. Everybody I called was in the movie, television, entertainment, sports business, and they understood the metaphor of “High Noon.” They understood that Clinton was stepping into the shoes of Gary Cooper. It was high noon, and we had to stand to help him.
So at 3:00 that day, or 4:00 that day, I said, “You got it. It’s high noon, you got your money. Now win.”
That’s right, Peter Guber is a Republican, he’s just a Republican who, as President of Sony, leveraged his relationships – and the power of his vaulted position – to help defeat an incumbent Republican president and war hero and elect the first Democrat to the White House since Jimmy Carter.
Go Republicans!
More recently, Howard Peter Guber of Mandalay Entertainment made a $2,300 donation to Hilary Clinton in 2007. Did “High Noon” have a sequel?
Of course, there is nothing dishonest about what Mr. Guber said, except for everything. His political party is in fact Republican, but his political philosophy is a bit more nuanced.
One wonders if his perspective on discrimination is equally vague. The question Ben Shapiro is asking in Primetime Propaganda is not does Hollywood have a problem with Republicans who work to elect Democrats, it’s do they have a problem with the rest of us?
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