Hyperbole?

Merkel turned herself into a German darling in Washington due to her less shrill tone on Iraq. -- AP

I'd like to go back and use the Daddy/Mummy analogy that Peter Hartcher introduced us to several posts back: http://guambatstew.blogspot.com/2005/10/motherless-child.html To paraphrase, left-leaners tend to have a Mummy image, providing love, health, education, worry and welfare, while right-leaners tend to have a Daddy image, providing self-discipline, self-reliance, economic management and security. This tends to give the Daddies an advantage over the Mummies because, in a shouting contest (which is really what most of the media "debates" boil down to) Daddies have the deep, blokey voice of authority and Mummies have the high, anxious voice of, well, girlies. Daddies can win simply because they have the voice, without regard to the message.

Because of that left-leaners really have to be careful with their arguments; by simply opening their mouths to speak, they start from a position of less perceived authority. To get their arguments heard, let alone to get them over, they have to pay closer attention to detail, lest they be laughed down by the sound of their voices. It's unfair, but let's not beat that dead horse.

And another thing before I get on to the main point of this post: Psychologists and courts have learned that eye-witness accounts of events are not the irrefutable perceptions we would expect. Eye-witnesses can actually tend to distort the search for truth in an event because they tend to lead us off on wild-goose chases or red-herrings or whatever other delicacy you want to use for analogy. Our brains are not hard-wired to perceive all that our eyes behold, and when our emotions are cranked up by our personal involvement in the event, perceptions become quite distorted.

This sets the stage, now, to consider a report about a man fighting a lone battle against government corruption and abuse in China, an issue near to the hearts and fingertips of left-leaner Mummy types, and not a few right-leaner Daddy types who have a distrust of things Chinese (or Oriental or unAmerican or unAustralian for that matter). This report was posted here three days ago: http://guambatstew.blogspot.com/2005/10/nonfiction-pulp.html

The reporter wrote, "The last time I saw Lu Banglie he was lying in a ditch on the side of the street - placid, numb and lifeless - the spit, snot and urine of about 20 men mixing with his blood, and running all over his body. They pulled him out and bashed him to the ground, kicked him, pulverised him, stomped on his head over and over again. He was unconscious within 30 seconds. They continued for 10 minutes. The body of this skinny little man turned to putty between the kicking legs of the men. He lay there - his eye out of its socket, his tongue cut, blood dropping from his mouth, his body limp, twisted. The ligaments in his neck were broken, so his head lay sideways as if connected to the rest of his body by a rubber band."

"Lifeless" he said. We were given no doubt that Lu Banglie was murdered by the mob that engulfed him and the reporter. Yet, today I read, "In the first statement on the incident by the central government, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Kong Quan, said Mr Lu was "quite safe". Lu Banglie, the civil rights activist savagely beaten at the weekend, has said he would not give up his campaign for more democracy in China despite the attack on him." http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/beaten-chinese-activist-vows-to-fight-on/2005/10/13/1128796653445.html?oneclick=true

It will now be convenient for some who may want to sweep the story of the battle against corruption under the rug, to try to dismiss the report of Lu Banglie's beating as reportorial hyperbole, the product of a shrill and unbalanced Mummy. It will also be convenient to try to shift the focus onto the involvement of foreign reporters and their responsibility to the people they report about as a means of distracting the story away from the real issue of governmental accountability, corruption and abuse, as noted by Rebecca MacKinnon in her thorough assesment of this case (http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2005/10/taishi_china_lu.html).

It is, perhaps, unfortunate that reporters are humans, with emotions, attachments, personal baggage, human limits. It is unfortunate because sometimes we get a distorted report. We get told that babies were raped and rescue helicopters shot at in New Orleans. We get told that a man was beaten lifeless in a small village in China. We get told lots of things everyday that, despite the best intentions and efforts (and sometimes the worst), are wrong. So we have to take all these accounts, particularly the ones that, being up close and personal, should be most credible, with a dose of sceptism, even if it supports our own biases. We have to immediately correct the stories when they are found to be false. And we have to keep our eyes on the main theme and not be distracted by shrill sounding Mommies and Daddies who only sound like they know what they're talking about.