Fake News and Real News – Scenes from Life Under the Pandemic

By John Michael Williams

Fake News

Though it is a Donald Trump, thing, I must admit there is an element of truth in it. Given that the guy might be able to out-lie Goebbels, it is odd, in a way, that he would call attention to it. After all, what point is there in undercutting the credibility of the media you use to publish your message? A sheer display of madness? Yet, he has been unmatched in gathering publicity.

To be specific, though, about personally encountered ‘fake news’ I offer this report.

When a business advertises itself as a source of factual information to the point of slogans like, “News You Can Trust” and so forth, then I expect that business to provide facts. Should it be  discovered that is not so, then confidence in the product drops because it isn’t actually news.

Not too long ago a local guy got the idea to have a parade of boats in San Diego Bay in support of Donald Trump, which was not designed ‘to divide the nation.’ When the supportive citizen publicly announced the event he claimed there would be ‘hundreds of boats and thousands of people.’

Reports on a local TV news that evening gushed about the event and repeated what the organizer had said: ‘not designed to divide the nation’ and ‘hundreds of boats and thousands of spectators’.

Having a fair amount of experience on San Diego Bay, and thereby a fair idea of its size, the promise of hundreds – meaning no less than 200, yeah – of boats parading on the bay was a sight I wanted to see. I had no interest in the “thousands” of onlookers.

About 12:15 on the afternoon of the parade I parked my car on the east facing side of Pt. Loma on Ullman Street with the sun behind me and a perfectly unimpeded view in front of me overlooking the parade’s starting point, and then waited for it to begin.

I was going to count water craft of any kind that passed the start mark. From paddle boards to motor yachts, from the beginning at 12:30 when the lead boat moved past the starting point to the end – around 1:30. After 15 minutes of no more boats – a grand total of 80 water craft passed the starting point. What a disappointment. Even so, it did make a good-sized and mutually cooperative crowd.

Having muddled through public education I was able to calculate that if 80=200 (# of boats in ‘hundreds’), then 400=2000 (# of spectators in 1000s). To be fair, cars are a lot more common than boats so the equations don’t balance in that regard. Much higher estimates or actual counts of spectators could be correct.

Anyway, reports on local TV news that evening continued the fluff about the event and said, ‘there were hundreds of boats and thousands of spectators.’

‘News you can trust to have pretty smiles.’

Later reports from the same local TV news suggested that lots and lots of Tik-Tok users had registered for the boat parade without any intention of attending, for what it’s worth.

Real News

As I sat in my room the other morning around 10, I began to hear shouting from the street behind our house. This has happened before and it didn’t alarm me. Quite often on summer evenings, the parents and children from one of the houses spend a good deal of time playing something in the street which is accompanied by shouts of glee and demand and laughter. It all sounds quite active and fun. I hear these events clearly, their sounds travel only about 60 feet.

But the shouts this morning were less pleasant. ‘Fuck you!’ I heard very loud. ‘Fuck you!’

‘I’ve got my son right here!’ from another voice.

‘I don’t give a fuck- get outta here.’ from the same voice.

Now, I think I’m hearing a domestic dispute involving child custody. The language and the tenor of the voices was angry and threatening and I’m led to think violence might be possible.

I hopped into my car drove around the corner and up three or four houses to see what was going on. There, I encountered a small blue sedan crosswise in the street. The driver was a young – 25 something – woman with her side toward me and her window down. She was trying to turn around. Our eyes met and I shouted, “What’s going on here?”

She said nothing and returned to maneuvering the car. She shouted ‘Back up!’ without looking at me. Before I’d processed and initiated a response, she’d finished getting ready to go and was heading purposefully up the street.

In the meantime, I saw in the street two not particularly tall but nonetheless still somewhat imposing White guys confronting a single, taller, thin Black guy wearing a red knitted cap, dark T-shirt, jeans and tennies. He had  a red-painted 2×4 about 6 foot long in his left hand.

The White guys were look-a-likes; the taller and heavier was about 5’7 and 170 lbs; he was thick chested and big armed. His head and cheeks were shaved bald but a well-trimmed full brown beard flowed from his mustache, around the mouth and down to his midchest. He wore a light colored T-shirt with some image on it and tan shorts. His cohort was 2 or 3 inches shorter and 25 pounds lighter. He wore a dark blue T-shirt and gray shorts: same build, bald head and full beard.

They were herding the Black guy backward up the street while a cigarette-smoking, older woman with her left arm folded across her stomach watched from the sidewalk on one side of the street and a group of two women and one man watched on the other.

The Black guy seemed to be carrying the piece of wood as though it were material at a construction site. His hand was in the center so the board hung parallel to the ground.

‘You don’t belong here! Get the fuck outta here!’ Big guy shouted. ‘Whataya doin’ here? Why are you here?’ he continued.

‘Don’t put me in a situation where I’m gonna have to hurt you.’ the Black guy said.

And then in an underhanded toss, he threw the 2×4 onto the grass parkway.

‘Oh. You’re gonna hurt me?’ The big guy’s voice managed to sound as though he, big guy, was making an invitation.

I moved forward slowly as the action evolved in front of me. The Black guy was retreating and also in need of a ride. So, our eyes meeting, I pointed to him and then to the rider seat.

By this time though, the young woman had moved past the White guys toward the retreating Black guy and had swung the rider side door open. Into the car he quickly jumped and off they sped. It was not at escape speed, just 35 or so up the narrow residential street. The Black guy stuck his entire torso out of the window to look back, shake his fists, and shout barely heard threats, epithets and taunts.

The taller bald guy finished his discourse with ‘Fuck you, N—–!’ and turned home thinking what a good day’s work he’d done, I suppose. The onlookers turned to talk about the event.

I drove home. Clearly, though I heard something that sounded like “son,” but that was not the word said. The word said surely would have been “gun”.

Had the big guy not used the N word, his performance might have been attributable to an over-zealous, over-protective homeowner insuring the security of himself, the others in his household, and his property. He might have thought, “Here’s an unknown black man carrying 6’ of 2×4 in front of my house. What’s he doing here? What might his intentions be? I’ll go see.”

That decision could be classified as rational. But, that word, n—–, and the other one, gun, are the matches that light hate and fear so I don’t think he made that decision.

The next evening, my mate said to me, “What you saw yesterday isn’t what was going on. The police were called and they made a report about what happened.”

“What was reported?” I asked.

She told me two men were reported for bothering a woman.