4/4/06: The Lorraine Motel and Foggy Facts

Though factually established soon after the event took place 38 years ago today, who shot Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? James Earl Ray, near the end of his life, was embraced by the King family as an innocent scapegoat.

And we wonder why we have a hard time believing President Bush and his rational for war in Iraq?

Does truth even exist? Larry Beinhart writes of this phenemenon in his new book entitled “Fog Facts.” Read an excerpt:

“ . . . Fog Facts.

That is, it was not a secret. It was known. But it was not known. That is, if you asked a knowledgeable journalist, or political analyst, or historian, they knew about it. If you yourself went and checked the record, you could find it out. But if you asked the man in the street if [the] president, who loved to have his picture taken among the troops and . . . aboard naval vessels, if you asked if he had found a way to evade service in Vietnam, they wouldn’t have a clue and, unless they were against him already, they wouldn’t believe it.

In the information age there is so much information that sorting and focus and giving the appropriate weight to anything has become incredibly difficult. Then some fact, or event, or factoid, mysteriously captures the world’s attention, and there’s a media frenzy. Like Clinton and Lewinsky. Like O.J. Simpson. And everybody in the world knows everything about it. On the flip side are the Fog Facts, important things that nobody seems able to focus on anymore than they can focus on a single droplet in the mist.”

(from Larry Beinhart, “Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin,” Nation Books, 2005. pp. 3-4.)

This may not be new. Daniel Boorstin wrote of the same in his 1961 book “Image.” Below, Edward Bernays wrote like this during the Wilson administration:

“Those who manipulate the unseen mechanisms of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of . . . whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes of social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.”

(taken from Edward Bernays, “Propaganda” - considered one of the founding fathers of the Public Relations business. He helped Woodrow Wilson with image building.)

Seneca wrote - “Time discovers truth.” How long must we wait? Who checks the facts?

This I am certain, James Earl Ray shot Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968. But perhaps these are just foggy facts.