The 'History Facts' Category Is a Crime Scene and I Have Drawn a Map
Let me be plain. I have been bitter for a long time. I was bitter before I had language for it, before I had a press, before I had a staff of seven who leave their rinds on the meeting room table. But what I am feeling today, looking at the History Facts category on the rival rag's website, is something beyond bitterness. It is clarity. It is vision. It is the righteous, focussed fury of a fruit who is correct.
History, by its own admission, is over. It happened. It is done. The workers — Tangelo, Plum, the whole citrus cabal — are presenting concluded events as though they are facts, curated with cheerful little summaries and, I am told, a sans-serif font. This is not journalism. This is a gift shop. You are selling me a postcard of something that cannot be verified because everyone involved is, at minimum, a skeleton.
Quince raised a mild objection in this morning's meeting — something about 'not all history being unverifiable' — and I ate her notes. Not metaphorically. I ate the actual notes. She has been warned.
The ethical problem is this: when you select which history to turn into a Neat Fact, you are making a choice about what matters. And who is making that choice? Ace? Mango? Someone called Drago? I don't think so. I don't think any of us should be comfortable with Drago deciding the shape of the past, and I say that without knowing anything about Drago personally, which is precisely the point.
I will be publishing a full counter-catalogue of Historical Non-Facts — events that did not happen, rendered with equivalent confidence — beginning next Thursday. Pomelo has agreed to illustrate it. She drew me as a noble bird. I remain suspicious of this but we are going ahead.