Muh Reverence for the Truth

Katherine Maher Answers Some Difficult Questions

File: Gerrit Zegelaar - Newspaper deliverer.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Oh dear, how very late I am today. I became totally and completely distracted watching clips of Katherine Maher before some government committee yesterday and didn’t manage to fling any words onto this bright screen. Ms. Maher is a person who fascinated me very much last year. I consumed all of her TED Talks and Zoom interviews and read about her life before she rode in on her grand DEI Steed to rescue National Public Radio. In fact, one of the very first pieces I wrote for WORLD was about her and her “minimum viable truth” idea. Quoting myself:

Minimum viable truth, she said, is about “getting it right enough, enough of the time, to be useful enough to enough people. It means setting aside our bigger belief systems and not being quite so fussy about perfection.”

To say it another way, the low, soothing timbre of her voice sounds so reasonable, but then when you begin to attend to what she is saying, it is enough to make your hair stand up on the back of your neck. I think I saw someone on X call her the Stupidest Person Alive—a destination I’m sure there are too many candidates for in these decadent and fretful times so that one could ever be able to say for sure.

But honestly, after listening to the hearings, I feel sorry for her.