Versailles. Le Petit Trianon.  La Chambre de Marie-Antoinette.  Postcard, author's collection

Even if you've never been there, you know the hand-tinted coloring on the negative is wrong.  Weirdly wonderful, maybe, but completely off.  Distorted but oddly charming perhaps.

There is nothing very charming, however, about distorting the truth.  Not in Marie-Antoinette's day, and not at the turn of the last century, and not now.   Yes, politically motivated publishers cranked out scurrilous pamphlets against the Queen.  Yes, there was misleading newspaper reporing back in 1904.   And yes, let's be honest: there's always been a market for lies.  But still, when I hear people say they get their news from Fox, my blood runs cold. 

"We don't know anyone who doesn't have health insurance," someone said to me recently.  Which of course is like saying you don't know anyone who's gay, although the two are completely unrelated. 

Yes you do, I say.  Yes you do know.  And yes you do know better.

The sad part is, those who are manufacturing the distortions and the lies and the faux news know exactly what they're doing.  Trust me, they have no illusions about leading the ignorant masses to the Light.  They are not out to spread the Truth. 

How they are able to sleep at night is the mystery.  

What they can expect to return as, in their next reincarnation, is too unpleasant to contemplate.