America can breathe a collective sigh of relief, and maybe choke back a tear or two of happiness. Paris Hilton’s dog, Tinkerbelle, has been found and reunited with her mistress. I just read that on the page in Newsweek that’s devoted to celebrity “news.”
 
I am pleased to hear the dog’s okay, I really am. It’s not the dog’s fault, but perhaps rather her misfortune, to live with a young woman whose life seems geared exclusively toward fame. It must be an arduous task to try not to blink with all those camera bulbs popping right in your eyes. Maybe Paris was temporarily blinded, and that’s when Tinkerbelle made her escape — er was snatched, or whatever.
 
I often wonder why people are so enamored of celebrity, be it earned or unearned. The successes of reality shows are prime examples of just such an infatuation. Seeing as I’m not a psychologist, however, I will avoid that type of analysis of this curious feature of human interests. In fact, I think, just this once, I’m going to forfeit analysis and inquiry and go with something that captures beautifully, I believe, why we enjoy people who are famous. Suffice it to say, it seems to me a fact best explained by the fantastic British comedian, Eddie Izzard.
 
One of his shows in San Francisco was broadcast a while back on a cable network. It’s a performance that weaves a seeming stream of comedic consciousness through a sprawl of human history that includes pagan religions, the Crusades, Martin Luther, Hitler (yes, and it’s really funny), and even a synopsis of the film “Speed” in French — and he does it all in fabulous drag. If you’ve seen his “Dress to Kill” you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, well, your education is simply incomplete.
 
In developing his comedic themes, he introduces certain phrases and physical touches to which he later calls back with brilliant comedic effect. It is one particular physical bit that, to my mind, is perfectly applicable to, and sums up the entirety of our fascination with celebrity. (After I reveal it, I’ll get to the lead I have buried a couple hundred words later.) So, Eddie is talking about how Engelbert Humperdinck got his name. Then he says that he’s just heard Engelbert has died that very day.
 
After sighing deeply, Eddie tells the audience it’s actually not true. Engelbert is, as far as he knows, fine. Then Eddie says, “No, it is true.” Engelbert got into a horrible accident that day. Then Eddie stops talking, and simply nods his head “yes” and shakes it “no,” both in response to his last claim about Engelbert. Eddie nods, ‘yes, Engelbert is dead.’ Eddie shakes his head, ‘no, Engelbert is fine.’ Then he nods again. Watching him demurely close his eyes, drop his chin, and subtly shake his head in denial, only to snap his head up suddenly, open his heavily made-up blue eyes wide, and fervently nod like a bobble-head doll says so much with no words at all.
 
To watch what’s going on with 527s ads that attack the presidential candidates is to experience what it feels like to see the Eddie Izzard Nod-Yes-and-Shake-No, except the net effect isn’t the feeling that you’ve just experienced the smart humor of Eddie Izzard (though, admittedly, the Will Ferrell as President Bush in the “Straight Talk” ad online is good for some chuckles). The problem is that all these ads, most recently the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” pieces, taken together have the cumulative effect of the nod-yes-and-shake-no routine.
 
There is a sense in which such a feeling works fine when talking about momentous events like Paris Hilton doing, well, anything. That’s because, in my estimation, there’s nothing fundamentally contradictory going on. I don’t say this to devalue the impact popular culture has on society, but I’m not sure it’s the same impact on society as is the current presidential campaign. We may find it inconsistent, for example, to call celebrity goings on “news,” but we feel perfectly consistent with our responses: we nod our heads enthusiastically at the good word of Tinkerbelle’s safe homecoming, we’re also closing our eyes and shaking our heads. Why can’t we do that with these ads? Why can’t we nod-yes-and-shake-no at an infantilized Bush or Kerry’s fellow veterans who denounce the Senator’s and other veterans’ version of events? It’s because contradiction is at stake, and, in terms of morality, contradiction is the same as lying.
 
In logic, a contradiction occurs when two statements cannot both be true or both be false at the same time. If it’s true that “All Americans are United States citizens,” then it must be false that “Some Americans are not United States citizens.” If it’s false that “No Vietnam veteran supported the Iraq war,” then it’s true that, “Some Vietnam veterans supported the Iraq war.” The sorts of claims that are being made in the ads, most recently those attacking Kerry’s version of events, seem to be of this order. They can’t both be true, and they can’t both be false. Maybe a lot of what happens in war sounds like “Roshomon”, but it seems to me that, given the accounts from the opposing sides, it cannot be the case that there both was and was not gunfire from the enemy at the exact moment and place that Kerry pulled his fellow soldier out of the river.
 
Some might say that it doesn’t matter whether or not there was gunfire, because the undisputed facts are that John Kerry served his country honorably. On the other hand, those who maintain there was no gunfire conclude that the Bronze Star awarded to Kerry as a result of pulling his countryman out of the river while under gunfire was a lie. The inference is clear: Kerry can’t be trusted to be honest with the people he serves, Americans.
 
We’ve already seen President Bush accused of lying to Americans in order to gain support for the war in Iraq. People who don’t want to accuse him of outright lying say he “mislead” the citizenry based on faulty intelligence. The difference between lying and misleading is that one is intentional, and morally repugnant, while the other is unintentional, and so not entirely blameworthy.
 
But does lying really matter to us when we’re trying to decide who to vote for? It’s certainly not the case that leaders disclose everything to their citizens. In fact, we expect them to lie, either by omission or telling falsehoods for the good of the country. We just don’t want them to lie when it’s not appropriate. We want our leaders to know when it’s okay to nod-yes-and-shake-no, and when it’s not.
 
Both the expectation that we may be lied to, along with the idea that there is a ‘greater good’ to be gained by lying, reveal two important ethical concepts Americans take for granted. The first, about lying, is that we don’t think it’s absolutely prohibited. Whenever students read Kant’s ethical theory for the first time, they are often struck by a seemingly absolute prohibition against lying. Even in the case of a murderer who comes knocking on your door looking for someone you’ve hidden in your house, you can’t lie and say you aren’t hiding him. “But,” people object, “it’s more right to save the person than to tell the murderer the truth!” Indeed, we often think, if we were hiding Anne Frank from the Nazis, would we have turned her over? Would we think it’s our moral duty to tell the truth about her whereabouts?
 
But there is a rub! Suppose you lie, and tell the murderer that no one is in your house. Within seconds, your frightened houseguest leaves your residence — only to run into the murderer in the alleyway! The point is that lying operates on the assumption that you have some control over how the future will turn out. Experience tells us that this isn’t always true. If it were, we’d all be gazillionaires from playing the stock market.
 
Another ethical concept presupposed in our beliefs about how to act is that there is a ‘greater good’ to be preserved. It’s the idea that, though one person is sacrificed, the whole survives and, more importantly, prospers. It’s a nice idea — until you’re the one who’s sacrificed. Our contemporary emphasis on rights more than suggests we don’t really believe it’s okay to undertake some action or other (including lying) for the greater good, because doing so presupposes that we’re willing to sacrifice our individual rights (and happiness) for the benefit of the group. Or, if we do believe it, we’re a bit confused about what we believe.
 
So, what does all this mean for the current “Swift Boat” ad controversy? It means a lot of things, to be sure, but mostly the idea here was to investigate why it is important. I don’t know what the truth is. It seems a no-win situation. (“Hello, Mr. Swift Boat Soldier? Yeah, um, you’re a liar. I know you served your country and all, but now you’re just a no-good political rat.”) What we’ll likely do as a country, even in the face of something so important as truths and lies, is watch these ads and the rest of the campaign, nodding-yes-and-shaking-no all the way.

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