Alternative Facts for Your Alternative Lifestyle

Alternative Facts for Your Alternative Lifestyle

I must admit that as much as I do not like Kellyanne Conway, I honestly feel for her and admire her resolve.  Let’s face it: it can’t be easy having to verbally defend a con man who spews more indefensible  horse shit than a John Deere tractor.  It leaves her in the unenviable position of having to manipulate the English language with so many euphemisms, hyperbolic comments and half-truths that even Trump himself, the man who turned political deception into its own art form, has to tip his red “Make America Great Again” baseball cap in acknowledgement of her performance.  And make no mistake, all that lying has aged her.  When I went to do the research for this column, I was shocked to find out this poor woman is only a couple years older than I am.  And that’s what she looks like after make-up and God knows how many cosmetic surgeries.  Ouch.

Yes, she struggles, at times, to keep up with all of Trump’s lies.  It sometimes feels like she is trying to repair every existing pothole in the state of California using the transportation budget for the municipality of Ames, Iowa.  Or as Seth Meyers recently put it, “Kellyanne Conway is like someone trying to do a Jedi mind trick after only a week of Jedi training.”  Struggle with covering all of Trump’s lies Kellyanne does.  But give her some credit.  It’s amazing at times just what she gets away with.  That is, until someone with a few remaining brain cells actually calls her out for her deception.

That was the case last week when she was interviewed by Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press”.  Todd, stupefied by the Trump administration’s downright refusal to accept the paltry crowds for the inauguration, asked Conway point-blank why press secretary Sean Spicer would lie in his first interaction with the press by suggesting “this was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration,” when there was clear visual evidence that this simply was not the case.  Conway now had to concoct a way to explain away the administration’s boldface lie without ever using the actual word “lie”, even though it was clear to anyone paying attention that this was exactly what it was.  So she turned to Todd and claimed that Spicer had given “alternative facts”.  Clever move, Kellyanne, especially given that Trump has been getting away with the use of “alternative facts” since he started his run for president.  But Todd, having seen this act quite a few times before, wasn’t having it.  His reply was perfect because sometimes, in the face of preposterous nonsense, you just have to call a spade a spade, “Alternative facts aren’t facts, they are falsehoods.”

Thank you, Chuck Todd, because we have needed someone to say this for quite some time now.  Be it climate change evidence, economic data, or unemployment figures, these folks have decided long ago to stop playing by the rules that oblige them to petty things like facts.  If they don’t like the facts, they simply come up with “alternative facts”, and for some inexplicable reason, folks have ceded them the right to them as if we were talking about opinions or perspectives.  But facts are not like opinions in that we don’t each get to have our own, especially when we don’t like them.

But since, Ms. Conway, seems to feel entitled to her own set of “alternative facts”, I’d like to provide you with mine.  The following comes from my personal list of half-truths devised with the idea in mind that when reality does not correspond with my perspective, I can merely come up with “alternative facts” that do.  The full list is available in my New York Times bestseller, Alternative Facts for Your Alternative Lifestyle.  And so….

Drinking six-packs help you get a six-pack.

Global warming is indeed a hoax, but it was not proliferated by the Chinese, as Trump has speculated, bur rather by Chilly Willy the Penguin in his diabolical and self-interested scheme to get scientists to develop a plan for cooling the Earth.

Sex burns more calories than any other workout regimen.  It is particularly beneficial for women dating men with the first name “Steven”.

Tom Brady does not deflate footballs.  In fact, he has the biggest balls in the NFL.

Childbirth is actually relatively painless.  For years, women, knowing men would have no empirical way to doubt the veracity of their claims, have grossly exaggerated the discomfort of the experience so that they could guilt trip their children to call them more often when they went off to college.

Birthday cake, especially when consumed on one’s own birthday, has no calories.

The United States has the best health care and education systems in the Westernized world.  Numerous studies have been conducted to document our vast superiority in these areas.

The electoral college, a group of seemingly anonymous individuals with no sense of accountability or consequence for their vote, more accurately reflects the will of the people than the straight calculation of the popular vote ever could.

Speeding tickets are tax-deductible, as are parking fines, noise violations, and citations for public intoxication.

The American criminal justice system is entirely color-blind.  African-Americans are questioned, arrested, and convicted at no higher rates than their peers of other ethnicities.  Rather, the only correlative factor that coincides with incarceration rates happens to be, interestingly enough, penis size.

All the plastic trash we place into the ocean is a viable food source for marine life.

Texas is not one of the fifty states.  Annexed years ago by Mexico, it has no voting rights in United States elections, and its citizens are permitted to travel here only with a verifiable work visa.

And finally, having your press secretary deliberately lie during his first interaction with the press is considered an impeachable offense under the United States Constitution.

These are my “alternative facts”.  Please feel free to share yours on my website or Facebook page for everyone else to see.