Alternate Realities – Baghdad Bob syndrome

Do you remember Baghdad Bob?
Of course that was not his real name, any more than the British World War II German propaganda broadcaster was really named Lord Haw-Haw. (Lord Haw-Haw’s real name was William Joyce, and he was hanged for treason after the end of World War II). The name “Baghdad Bob” (along with a less popular “Comical Ali”) was bestowed upon him by the western media in the early days of the Iraq War, when he would show up to press conferences, and, replete with enthusiasm, he would describe a view of reality that soon diverged dramatically from the view that the media could see and determine from other evidence.
Soon, Baghdad Bob morphed into his own one-man entertainment channel, with the media eagerly showing up to his press conferences just to see What Amazing Shit He Would Talk Next.
Ultimately though, Iraq was tossed out of Kuwait, and Baghdad Bob receded into a historical footnote, a canned reminder of how utterly ludicrous propaganda begins to sound when it becomes obviously disconnected from reality.
But not so fast…one of the features (it may be a bug, but on an amusement level it is more of a feature) of this election cycle is the sheer amount of propaganda being created by supporters of Donald Trump. Those of us who watched the 2012 electoral cycle were able to see the whole “unskewed polls” propaganda attempt, as supporters of Mitt Romney, unhappy that the majority of the published polls in the last month of the campaign started to show Romney falling behind Barack Obama, began to construct an alternate reality. The creation of the website Unskewedpolls, which published manipulated data showing Romney winning the race, attracted a lot of ridicule as it insisted, in increasingly shrill fashion, that Mitt was going to win. When the election results came out, and he had lost, the website’s owner became a laughing stock as he frantically dug for more and more implausible explanations for how his site had created a set of incorrect predictions.
But…it gets better. Not only are the claims that the polls are skewed back, mixed in with confident sounding predictions that Donald will win because Lots Of People Are Going To Magically Show Up And Vote For Him On Polling Day, but the other folks studying at the Baghdad Bob School of Ludicrous Propaganda are branching out. Like failed ex-Libertarian and general-purpose conspiracy-believing loopy-loo Wayne Allyn Root, who thinks that Donald Trump could never possibly have harrassed any women. No sirree. And here is his explanation of why:

Apart from the appalling use of spelling and grammar (I was not aware that “handsomest” was even a valid English word, but them I am one of those intellectuals, which makes my judgment suspect in some social circles), this is so effing ludicrous that I did actually burst out laughing.

Facebooktwitterlinkedinrssyoutube
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Healthprose pharmacy reviews