Alex Juhasz responds in Podcast form to "Call the Man of the Year a Liar."
We Need Gentle Truths for Now: Radical Digital Media Literacy as Podcast
Hi! I’m Alex Juhasz, and this is Episode Three of “We Need Gentle Truths for Now.” We engage in radical digital media literacy by enjoying a bite of education and a bit of poetry, creating humane responses to fake news and social media in the era of Covid-19.
The hardtruth we’re exploring as radical digital media literacy in this episode? “Call the Man of the Year a Liar.” This was the 81st hardtruth of my online primmer. It consists of just one intense, angry thing: Joan Baez singing a song, “Nasty Man.” Baez created a YouTube video of her performance as a work of activist art during the first 100 days of the current administration.
PLAY SONG
A year later, I held a Fake News Poetry Workshop in Los Angeles with a youth poets collective, called “Get Lit Poets.” There, a young man named Mika Judge reacted to Baez’s song by writing a poem, “Call the Man of the Year a Liar.” Later, when I was collecting workshop poems for a book project, Mika emailed me a revision of his original, building on responding to some of the new lies of the Covid-Nineteen era.
A Response to "Call the Man of the Year a Liar"
i wrote the first draft of this poem
in early 2018:
back then, the title might've been daring and rebellious:
the middle finger of an indignant nation.
but time didn't name trump 2016 person of the year as a congratulations--
it only means that he "for better or for worse…[did] the most to influence the events of the year."
and didn’t he change american politics forever? forget “unity”--
didn’t he dig our divides deeper, and become internationally celebrated?
deceptions have come to light. pledges about wages, federal debt, his own taxes remain incomplete. call him a liar --
but he tells the truth sometimes. something ugly, always met with loving cheers. the fulfillment of his promises are often worse
than the lies.
that first day, Sean Spicer inflated an average crowd to mammoth & monumental:
“the largest audience to witness an inauguration, period”
the first in a long list of the administration's dishonesties.
the country's changed since then. obscured in dust. the mountains sink into the valleys: what used to seem unimaginably below us is now firmly normal. the latest news always leaves an ache in your lungs.
a coal mine has opened under our feet.
and oh! we should have listened--
it is the same one he promised us
all those years ago.
Mika calls the president out for years of lies, deceptions that have only been partially exposed. He also notes his embrace of the ugliest of truths -- including the truth of white supremacy. Mika knows that this nasty man, and his allies, are creating the new pain many of us now feel in our lungs.
Thank you, Mika, for your revision. From your poems, we learn that our truths, like the president’s lies, are powerful and adaptive.
And thank you for listening to Episode Three of “My Phone Lies to Me: Radical Digital Media Literacy as Podcast.” Want to adapt with us? This project aims to counter digital media’s reliance on logics of scale. Our Fake News Poetry workshops stay small and local. For this podcast, we move our intimate content and intimate processes online, where we invite you to engage. You can volunteer to read a poem or hardtruth. You can write a response to one of the poems or hardtruths. Or you can stage a digital workshop of your own. Please email us at 100hardtruths@gmail.com. To learn more about the project listen to Episode Zero or see the embedded links.
This podcast was produced, written, and read by Alexandra Juhasz. It was directed and edited by Matthew Hittle, copy edited by Gavin McCormick, with music by Noah Chevin. Additional readings are by Joan Baez and Mika Judge. Thank you for listening.