Rex W. Huppke’s Creatively Clever Chicago Tribune Obituary for “Facts” — His Essay Encapsulates American Culture’s Descent into Reality-Irrelevant Vacuity

© 2012 Peter Free

 

04 May 2012

 

 

Citation

 

Rex W. Huppke, Facts, 360 B.C.-A.D. 2012, In memoriam: After years of health problems, Facts has finally died, Chicago Tribune (19 April 2012)

 

 

Creative insight into the empty-headedness of most of our culture

 

In the above column, Chicago Tribune reporter, Rex W. Huppke, creatively expressed outrage at American society’s blatant disregard for truth.

 

I seized on his column because I am too verbally direct to exhibit the kind of captivating and insightful flair that Mr. Huppke’s does.  I admire genius.

 

Huppke’s talent manifests in recognizing that American culture is reversing civilization’s previous concern with taking Reality and facts seriously.

 

To get his message across, he wrote an obituary for (Mr. or Ms.) Facts.

 

 

Rex Huppke’s metaphor

 

He wrote:

 

To the shock of most sentient beings, Facts died Wednesday, April 18, after a long battle for relevancy with the 24-hour news cycle, blogs and the Internet.

 

Though few expected Facts to pull out of its years-long downward spiral, the official cause of death was from injuries suffered last week when Florida Republican Rep. Allen West steadfastly declared that as many as 81 of his fellow members of the U.S. House of Representatives are communists.

 

Facts held on for several days after that assault — brought on without a scrap of evidence or reason — before expiring peacefully at its home in a high school physics book. Facts was 2,372.

 

"It's very depressing," said Mary Poovey, a professor of English at New York University and author of "A History of the Modern Fact."

 

"I think the thing Americans ought to miss most about facts is the lack of agreement that there are facts. This means we will never reach consensus about anything. Tax policies, presidential candidates. We'll never agree on anything."

 

© 2012 Rex W. Huppke, Facts, 360 B.C.-A.D. 2012, In memoriam: After years of health problems, Facts has finally died, Chicago Tribune (19 April 2012) (paragraphs split)

 

Huppke provides Fact’s life history, tracing his birth back to Aristotle in Greece.  And continuing on through the centuries, via the stages of development in science and mathematics.

 

But in the last few decades, Mr./Ms. Facts got sick.  Those who did (and do) not understand how science and truth verification work questioned Facts’ existence. Media outlets stoked partisanship, without making any attempt to verify Facts’ presence.

 

Opinion now substitutes for Truth.

 

 

The recent stages of Facts’ illness

 

Building metaphorically on Mr. Huppke’s (less descriptive) verbiage:

 

Facts lingered through Bill Clinton’s lies about Monica.

 

Struggled to hold onto life through President George W. Bush’s false presentation of the weapons of mass destruction and terrorist situation in Iraq.

 

Gasped for air in the hail of truth-defying arrows about President Obama’s un-American origin.

 

Floundered haplessly through the Republican Party 2012 presidential primary, barely clinging to life when candidate Michele Bachmann said the HPV vaccine caused mental retardation.

 

And finally triggered the heart monitor alarm, done in by Rep. West’s maggot-brained and false assertion about Congressional communists.

 

 

Professor Poovey is correct, opinions have become Facts

 

Even down to penetrating our institutions of supposedly higher learning.

 

In indirectly corroborating his thesis about Facts’ demise, Mr. Huppke had the presence of mind to include an interview with Gary Alan Fine, a professor of sociology at Northwestern University.

 

The professor — who seems not to understand science’s fundamental premises — said that there are “too many” facts.

 

In the professor’s view, the multiplicity of studies regarding global warming means that people can oppose each other with facts taken from different studies.  The concept of scientific consensus about verifiable basic information appears to have escaped Professor Fine’s scientifically obtuse (misquoted or mis-contexted) intellect.

 

Journalist Huppke succinctly commented about Professor Fine’s perspective:

 

To some, Fine's insistence on Facts' survival may seem reminiscent of the belief that rock stars like Jim Morrison are still alive.

 

"How do I know if Jim Morrison is dead?" Fine asked. "How do I know he's dead except that somebody told me that?"

 

© 2012 Rex W. Huppke, Facts, 360 B.C.-A.D. 2012, In memoriam: After years of health problems, Facts has finally died, Chicago Tribune (19 April 2012)

 

That is certainly one way of looking at the dead rock star issue.

 

But — if the anti-hearsay-science rule were a legitimate source of massive doubt, the dear professor could not even depend on sociological studies that he himself had not performed.  Which would mean that, if he religiously lived this skepticism regarding other people’s studies, he could not himself be a PhD-recipient or a professor.

 

In sum, the apparently intellectually inept Professor Fine makes Huppke’s case about Facts’ death for him.

 

How delightful an ending to a brilliant essay is that?

 

 

The moral? — As journalist Rex W. Huppke indicates, our culture is going backward

 

Truth has a way of eventually mashing us against Reality’s often unkind teeth.  I suspect that societies, that are more observant of Facts, will soon outperform our own.

 

With Facts’ death, the American baboon-folk have taken over.  Chattering blindly through a forest that is ultimately going to step on them or their descendants.