At the Daily Caller, I was reading an item about the young man who is kind of a black activist who is now being challenged as not-black — as, in fact, white. In his defense, he has spoken of “my truth.”
Ah, yes. There’s a lot of that going around these days. And it is longstanding. While researching my history of the Nobel Peace Prize, I read a fair amount about Rigoberta Menchú, the famous Guatemalan. She wrote a totemic memoir, or had one written for her. It proved to be full of holes, i.e., lies. In her defense, Menchú spoke of “my truth.”
Next month, I have another book coming out — Plug City, y’all. This book is Children of Monsters: An Inquiry into the Sons and Daughters of Dictators.
Edda Mussolini Ciano was Il Duce’s first child, elder daughter, and personal favorite. This did not stop him from executing — or failing to stay the execution of — her husband, Count Ciano, his ex-foreign minister. Decades later, Edda wrote a memoir which came out, in English, as My Truth.
Bokassa, the butcher of Central Africa, wrote a memoir, Ma vérité, “My Truth.”
Obviously, subjective experience is a very important thing in life. But truth is truth, chillen. And untruth is untruth.