By Darren Mcvey
There is an understood principle in politics that if one repeats a lie enough, the populous will believe it. As Winston Churchill so astutely put it, “A lie gets half way around the world before the truth can get its pants on.” Examples of this abound in this new century.
Take the lie that President Bush told about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He did not lie. He had intelligence that supported it and he, along with nearly every other leader, believed it. One can say he was wrong, but one cannot say he lied.
Although there has never been a man more lied about that President Bush (involvement in 9/11, the levee that broke during Katrina, spying on Americans and many others), the left is not immune. Take the lie that Barack Obama is a Muslim. There is nothing wrong with being a Muslim, but the fact remains that Sen. Obama is a Christian. Nonetheless, the lie has enough momentum for a significant number of Islamophobes to believe it.
There is a recent case, however, that is reducing the threshold for how often a lie has to be repeated to become accepted. The first time I heard this new lie, it came from the mouth of John Edwards. In a speech in Chapel Hill, N.C. on Nov. 21, Edwards unveiled his plan to fight “widespread hunger.” Edwards claimed, “More than 35 million Americans went hungry last year, including almost 12 million children.”
Coming from Edwards, I assumed it to be pure demagoguery. If the richest country in the world allows over 10 percent of its citizens to go hungry, there is something seriously wrong with our values. As with most things that Sen. Edwards says, I dismissed it because he has a truth problem and McDonald’s has a dollar menu.
The stat, however, must be catching on. In a Dec. 27 letter to the editor in the Courier-Journal, the number was cited in a vague attack on Sen. Mitch McConnell, President Bush and free-market capitalism. To borrow a line from our fearless leader, I “misunderestimated” Sen. Edwards’ ability to lie and the American people’s ability to spot bullcrap.
Let’s set the facts straight. The United States Department of Agriculture Hunger Report, available for anyone to look up on their Web site, reported that in 2006, 10.9 percent of U.S. households experienced food insecurity. Four percent of households experienced very low food security, i.e. hunger, defined by “reports of multiple indications of disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake.”
As for the other seven percent that experienced food insecurity, these households experienced low food security, or food insecurity without hunger. Low food security is defined by “reports of reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet. Little or no indication of reduced food intake.” So instead of choosing between Olive Garden and Red Lobster, some Americans are forced to live off Ramen noodles and Campbell’s Soup. I guess our friends in Miller Hall are suffering from food insecurity too.
According to the 2006 census, there are 77 million households in America. The average household contains 2.57 individuals. So that means 21 million people experienced food insecurity and about eight million people experienced hunger at least once last year.
Eight million hungry is a problem, but 35 million is an emergency. It’s respectable and admirable to run on a platform of reducing domestic hunger, but it’s not okay to distort facts to score a political point. As we know, however, when it comes to politics, the facts don’t matter much to John Edwards.
