Blue State Blues: ‘Truth Isn’t Mean. It’s Truth.’

So Mark Levin thinks I’m an “a-hole.” That’s OK. I still love the guy. He’s brilliant. He’s a leader. And he may be right.

In this business, there is no higher praise than “a-hole.”

I prefer “Rottweiler,” which is what someone else once called me. They meant it badly, but I’ll interpret Levin’s remark in the best light.

Because everyone emerges from the Ted Cruz stories (here, and here) a winner: Donald Trump, who raised the issue; Ted Cruz, who played open cards, and, well, us.

In his memoir, Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World!, Andrew Breitbart wrote:

Truth isn’t mean. It’s truth….We start by uncovering the truth and telling everyone about it. I’m not religious, and I’m certainly no theologian, but if there is one thing in religion that speaks to me, it is the idea of absolute truth. In fact, the word truth has meaning only if it is absolute. And absolute truth set us all will se us all free…”. [original emphasis]

That remains our creed today.

It is what led us, in 2012, to vet Barack Obama more thoroughly than anyone in the mainstream media had, or would.

In May 2012, we ran a story that simultaneously destroyed, and explained, the Birther phenomenon. It turned out that Obama’s literary agent published a promotional pamphlet in 1991 that claimed he was born in Kenya. On her website, she maintained that claim for many years–until he ran for president.

So while Obama was definitely born in Honolulu, he also claimed–or allowed his agent to claim, deliberately or negligently–something else, possibly to sell books.

That fit a pattern with Obama, who once called himself a “blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” He was willing to let people see whatever they wanted to see in him, the better to conceal his true self until safely ensconced in office.

We promised to scrutinize other candidates the same way. And I found it personally troubling when conservatives–not Levin, but others–who loved the spectacle of Trump pushing Obama to release his “long-form” birth certificate suddenly said there was something sad and cynical in trying to find out facts about Cruz.

How could it matter more that Obama “might” have been born in Kenya (he wasn’t) than that Cruz had been born in Canada? Unless…

No. We had to be consistent. We had to find the truth–certainly before Hillary Clinton, or the vile Alan Grayson, threw our own contradictions in our collective faces.

And just as we learned much about Obama in proving his legitimacy, we learned much about Cruz as well. We learned–or confirmed–that Cruz plays it straight, that he is ready to face the scrutiny of rival politicians and the press.

Yes, it was a small point. But it was also a big win.