There is a kind of word candy ubiquitous in the public sphere these days among government officials, business leaders and the media that should be a red flag for anyone who still cares about language, honesty and integrity.
Granted, I may be preaching here to a remarkably small and shrinking audience.
This oratorical device is a 21st century twist on the old adage of, “How do you know when a politician is lying?”
Answer: Their lips are moving.
In this case, that old saw could be reduced to a singular word, uncanny in its universal utility.
The word? Transparent.
Those three syllables do a ton of work these days.
Derived from the Latin word transpere, it means to appear through. In this context, it is the notion that something is open to public scrutiny.
It rolls off the tongues of leaders trying to convince the press, the public — or both — that they are utterly devoid of secrets and contrivances.
More often than not, it is a signal someone is ready to serve up some Grade A obfuscation and the listener is about to hear a soliloquy designed to seduce even as it deceives.
I’ve heard elected government officials talk of transparency, and then turn around and walk into a closed door meeting to do all manner of bidding on topics that should be held up to the public magnifying glass.
California’s Brown Act, the state’s open public meeting law, provides plenty of loopholes to shroud both the innocuous and the nefarious alike behind such exemptions as litigation, contracts, or my personal favorite, “personnel matters.”
Government leaders then emerge from those closed doors and proclaim, “We are transparent, ask us anything!” Except that for which you know nothing about, even to ask.
But that pesky HR complaint or lawsuit isn’t just salacious dirt, it often speaks to larger issues of character and good government.
Too often when a public official gets caught abusing that public trust, they are allowed to quietly resign and slink into the sunset, their malfeasance a private shadow that will fade by the time they find a new gig.
In the wake of George Floyd and other police killings, law enforcement upped their transparency talk too.
But too often if you want details or basic information, law enforcement will hide behind the fiction of an “active investigation” long after the corpse is cold.
Other states have rigorous public records laws that require law enforcement to release incident reports upon request that detail the date, time and place of action, responding agencies, whether force was used and, most importantly, a brief factual narrative of events.
In California, you are lucky to get a jail booking, a charge description and whatever the law enforcement agency chooses to post on Facebook.
It is not much better when you get to a courthouse. In California, the criminal complaint is a scant few sentences with the suspect’s name, the charge and date of offense.
In other states, the complaint is a detailed narrative of at least a couple pages outlining what occurred and the probable cause for arrest.
Transparency is also the buzz word of the moment in business.
It seems ridiculous to talk about transparency in the sphere of capitalism and marketing, when competitive advantage and consumer delusion is the coin of the realm, but here we are.
Was 3M transparent about PFAS forever chemicals? Monsanto about Roundup? Tesla about its autopilot? And yet, all three companies have talked about their corporate transparency.
Social media companies in particular have elevated the transparency word play to new heights even as they hide behind opaque algorithms and exhaustive user agreements.
You, dear user, are the product they should say for sake of transparency. You are the rat in the cage that we have monetized, pulling on the lever of a like button to receive intermittent reinforcement.
Social media companies are about as transparent as tobacco companies in the 1950s, which is why they are now being sued, using the same product liability framework that ensnared big tobacco.
The media is a business too, or at least it tries to be one, and transparency has become a kind of surrogate for objectivity.
In other words, the audience knows we are not objective, so at least we can be transparent about our biases.
The newly anointed CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil promised he will “be more accountable and transparent than Walter Cronkite.”
Three weeks later, the White House press secretary was caught on tape saying an interview with President Trump needed to be broadcast in its entirety or they would “sue your ass off.” CBS News did as instructed.
That isn’t transparency, its complicity.
To be fair, transparency is one hell of a hill to stake a flag upon, and a test few of us can routinely pass.
It’s a rung up from honesty, which is being truthful when asked.
Transparency requires proactively being open and forthcoming before you are even asked.
It’s like taking the mute button off your brain.
It requires a level of humility and grace that may be impossible in an age when we are too quick to excoriate and so frequent to litigate.
To transparently open up the sausage factory of government, business or media is to go dumpster diving in the human condition, excavating desires and motivations that are sometimes craven and complex, driven by Ego and Id.
The word transparency has been devalued by its overuse to become utterly meaningless, often signaling its very opposite. We should all think twice before we make promises we can’t keep.
Tom Lyden is a staff writer for the Mariposa Gazette and can be reached at tom@mariposagazette.com.
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