My profession has a saying, coined right here in Chicago: "If your mother says she loves you, check it out." Good advice, particularly now that building airy castles of fabrication is official U.S. government policy, and social media is awash in engaging untruths, making each of us a little paper boat buffeted by an endless typhoon of lies. Anything unusual enough to catch attention merits immediately asking: Is this true?
A few days ago I noticed a grid of 15 images supposedly created by the U.S. Department of Labor, assembled by Geoff Bowser, a Brooklyn real estate attorney with fewer than a thousand followers on Bluesky. "I made an image of all the art posted by US DOL on X since approximately Labor Day," he wrote.
A dozen of the images were versions of the same broad-shouldered white hunk, with stern admonishments like "BUILD YOUR HOMELAND'S FUTURE" and "AMERICANS FIRST." The other three were a family straight out of "Fun with Dick and Jane," right down to the white-collared shirtwaist dress on the little girl.
The standard 1950s dream images of a white-bread America that never existed — not without squinting away a whole bunch of folks who didn't count, then, and apparently still don't. An America that exists even less today, except in the fever dreams of those, now sadly in power, trying to stuff our country back into the confines of their narrow cookie-cutter molds.
Why is this surprising? It perfectly meshes with everything else going on. Chicagoans are being snatched from the streets by masked thugs for the crime of being Brown in public. Black people are scrubbed from of our nation's history on official websites and driven out of positions of authority in the military.
Yes, I know that one reason totalitarianism succeeds, at first, is that decent people can't quite believe what they're seeing. You carefully pack your suitcase per instructions, not realizing it's going to be yanked away on the train platform. You show up for your job interview with a haircut and your best suit, not realizing they're never going to hire a person who looks like you.
But could the Department of Labor really be representing America as a white man and only a white man, with no minorities in sight, and women, who make up half the work force, delegated to gazing with adoration at a daughter — in a pink bonnet! — at church?
The United States is 19% Hispanic. Twelve percent Black. Six percent Asian. More than a third of the population. Is the Labor Department really giving them all the cold shoulder?
I jumped on X to check — "if your mother tells you she loves you" etc.— and examined the Labor Department's X feed.
The images are in support of Operation Firewall, the department's move to restrict visas.
"The American Dream belongs to the American People," the department announces over one poster. And we know who those people are.
"Initially, I just went to X out of curiosity to see whether the art that was posted was representative of the full extent of the art they used," Bowser told me. "When I saw that it was all white men as workers ... I felt compelled to share it as a composite to draw attention to the propaganda and racism."
Why bother putting together that grid and disseminating it?
"I'm angry and heartbroken about what Trump is doing to this country," said Bowser, who has two boys, 3 and 6. "On a more basic level, I'm doing it because it's something I can do. I don't want to have to tell my sons that I didn't try to stand against this."
I reached out to the Labor Department for comment, forgetting that the government is shut down until further notice.
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It's probably even worse than what it seems at first glance. These images are all CGI creations. The big boss AI generator in the clouds is being programmed by malevolent bigots. We need to nip this in the bud.
ReplyDelete"If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out with two independent sources" or "If your mother says she loves you, check it out." Both of those originated at the old City News Bureau.
ReplyDeleteThat was where all the young reporters learned how to cover hard news and breaking news stories, which were still called bulletins back in the day. They were often sent back to get more information for their stories, so that they would learn to get it in the first place.
One of the stories I heard about the CNB was the one about a young reporter who called in the story of the killing of an infant. He was sent back to get the answer to the question, "What color were the dead baby's eyes?" A variation was that the baby had choked to death on a Christmas tree ornament. The reporter was told to call back the grieving parents and ask: "What color was the ornament your baby choked on?"
Supposedly, somebody refused to do it, and they were fired. Those kinds of stories were cautionary tales. You had to get your hands dirty, and if you didn't, then somebody else would. And they would be the ones who filled the next available slot at the Sun-Times or the Daily New or the Trib. Only the strong survived. That was the Chicago way.