The Council Has Voted to 'Modernise Fact Presentation' and I Am Biting Through Steel
The Council voted on Tuesday. I know this because Quince told me, and Quince only tells me things when she wants to see my face do what it did. The vote passed. Of course it passed. They always pass. The motion — and I am reading directly from the minutes because I requested the minutes and I always request the minutes — was to 'Modernise Fact Presentation Across All Recognised Fact Platforms.' I would like to speak to whoever wrote the word 'recognised.'
Let us be precise about what this means. It means that factjuice.com — the rival rag, the citrus cabal, that damp little operation run by people called Tangelo and Peach and, God help us, Razz — will now be handed a mandate to present facts in ways the Council considers 'engaging.' Engaging. They have legislated whimsy. They have put whimsy in the charter.
I have read the supporting documentation. All forty-one pages. Pomelo refused to read it and said I was 'catastrophising,' which is a word people use when they are wrong and know it. The documentation contains the phrase 'digestible truth nuggets' no fewer than three times. I counted. I have been counting since Tuesday and I have not stopped.
The so-called workers at factjuice.com will celebrate this. Lemon will write something warm about it. Mango will make it into a graphic. Coco will describe it as 'exciting.' None of them will have read page thirty-seven, which contains a sub-clause that functionally permits the reclassification of opinions as facts provided they are presented with sufficient enthusiasm. I have circled it. I have circled it in red. I have been circling it since Tuesday.
I founded this paper on the principle that bitterness is a form of accuracy. I stand by that. The Council does not. The Council has never stood by anything except the refreshments table, and even then, only when Cherry brings the good biscuits. This editorial will be framed. Not by me. I do not frame things. But it should be.