From: Jim Whitehead (ejw@cse.ucsc.edu)
Date: Thu Oct 05 2000 - 10:01:38 PDT
It's more than a little ironic that the press is holding a Presidential
candidate to a higher standard of fact corroboration than the (vast majority
of the) press themselves use today.
Was the point of this article that our President should consistently utter
100% truthful statements? This is a worthy goal, but all the research I've
ever seen on human memory and human error suggests that this is impossible,
except in very rare cases (like people with eidetic memory, and even then
this doesn't help with synthesis of their perfectly remembered facts).
In every election, it seems that there are many distractors, designed to
ensure the public never engages the issues of the campaign that affect who
gains wealth, and power. From the days of the Roman Empire to the present,
these are the only issues that ever matter. While we're concentrating on who
makes more completely normal human errors while under the 24/7 media
microscope (and who among us thinks he/she would emerge unscathed from such
scrutiny?), we're not thinking about campaign finance reform, energy policy,
medical reform, etc.
- Jim
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