The global editorial director of Huffington Post Media Group has charged that Republican presidential primary front-runner Ben Carson is creating the story of his life and selling it to a world of supporters who “live in a separate reality from ones that other people do.”
At a Brookings Institution conference to discuss the media’s influence on the election, Howard Fineman said that Carson is an example of people and candidates who create their own facts and narratives.
His comments go further than any of the other media reports and accusations that Carson is shading his past.
What’s more, Fineman said that Carson doesn’t believe anybody is allowed to question his life facts and that he doesn’t care if his stories are questioned by the mainstream media.
Video from the Brookings conference.
“It turns out that everybody did not create an avatar of themselves. Remember when avatars are going to be the next big thing? That hasn’t quite happened. Actually people have short-circuited that. Rather than create a cartoon version of themselves online, they’ve created themselves online. And Ben Carson is an example of that,” said the longtime Washington reporter.
“Everybody thinks they’re entitled to their own facts. They’re creating the facts, they’re creating the narratives,” he added.
Below is the transcript of what Fineman said about Carson at the Brookings event. In the accompanying video, it begins at 1:00:36.
Carson is only addressing his people. He is addressing a reality in which they believe, in which they immerse themselves.
I believe he has 4.5 or 5 million Facebook likes I believe. He’s got his own world. He’s got a world of his books, he’s got a world of his websites, he’s got a world of his Facebook page, and he’s got some sympathetic news organizations out there if you can call them that. And so he’s only speaking to his world.
They live in a separate reality from ones that other people do. And what’s fascinating to me about Ben Carson is that he sort of rejects the idea that anybody has a right to question him about his story about himself.
Now I haven’t thought this through–it’s true of much of what I say–but there’s got to be some relationship between the fact that people can create a reality for them, they can create a personality for themselves online, OK?
It turns out that everybody did not create an avatar of themselves. Remember when avatars are going to be the next big thing? That hasn’t quite happened. Actually people have short-circuited that. Rather than create a cartoon version of themselves online, they’ve created themselves online. And Ben Carson is an example of that.
And so if people are allowed, or even encouraged to do that online, why can’t presidential candidates do that online, and who is anybody else to tell that it’s false? Because it’s online, therefore it’s real…
Everybody thinks they’re entitled to their own facts. They’re creating the facts, they’re creating the narratives…
The candidates don’t want us to know them at all, they want to create their own reality and now they have powerful ways to do it that completely short-circuit the media structures, and the Boys on the Bus, and everything else that existed in the past. Ben Carson really doesn’t give a flip what the New York Times says about him and that’s a big change.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
