The Knuckleball of Truth

Spin is a word with many meanings. A top spins. You can take your car out for a spin. You can spin the truth.

Spin is defined as a rotation around a fixed point. Physics dictates that an object moving through a resistive medium like water or air will bend if spin is present. Golfers are painfully aware of hooks and slices. A baseball pitcher puts spin on the ball to get a curve or a slider. In tennis, a topspin lob drops like a rock while a cut shot with backspin floats.

In the world of opinion, the truth is spun…by almost everyone…and people like it that way. Bill O’Reilly of Fox News claims his show is a “no spin zone” and yet clearly his truth is decidedly right leaning. When a recent letter to Bill indicated that the writer seldom agreed with Bill but did on a particular point, rather than acknowledge their common opinion, Bill said “That makes you a Secular Progressive. “ He had to make sure his core audience knew where he stood without actually saying so…Spin!

The more left leaning commentators on MSNBC do the same thing…spin! But in all fairness to both the Left and the Right, that is exactly what their audiences want. They can follow the truth if it has spin.

If a batter knows a pitcher is going to throw a curve, he can follow the start of the arcing flight of the ball and coordinate his bat position to hit the ball. The trouble is he doesn’t know what the pitcher is going to throw. If the tennis player knows a topspin forehand is coming, he will know how to adjust to the lower ball flight and the quicker bounce and he can return the shot…if he knows it is coming. Both athletes understand the spin and can be where they need to be. But ask a batter what is the hardest pitch to hit and he will say the knuckle ball. Ask a tennis player and they will say the absolutely flat shot is hardest to track. Why? Because they have very little spin and, as a result, the ball wobbles, sometimes up sometimes down sometimes left and sometimes right.

And so it is with the truth. Truth, delivered with no spin, bobs and weaves its way into our consciousness. Good people do bad things. Bad guys are not always that bad. It is this moral ambiguity that spun truth lacks. Sadly, pure truth is most often accurately portrayed in shades of gray. And as much as we want to think we want it, very often Col. Nathan Jessup (Jack Nicholson’s character in “A Few Good Men”) is correct when he observed “You can’t handle the truth.”