John Stewart had a pretty funny episode of The Daily Show recently, where he got mad at Obama for not being transparent. You can watch it here:

During the election, I just shook my head when I heard Obama’s promises of transparency, because I knew it wasn’t practical. It is naive and unrealistic for citizens to expect 100% transparency from their government, not because the government is necessarily being corrupt and is hiding things from us, but because there are just some things the government is privy to that we citizens should not know.

Sure enough, now that Obama is president, he is hiding certain things from us—as I knew he would, and as he probably should. It was irresponsible for him to promise us transparency in the first place, which is why so many Americans are upset at him, but I don’t think we should receive absolute transparency. Now, I do expect transparency in certain areas. Who is getting what money from which source, for instance, is something I think citizens should know, because it holds the government accountable. But John Stewart is complaining about a few things that I think should be kept from us.

The images of torture, for instance, should never be shown to the public. If the torture is really as bad as everyone says, and if those images are really as graphic and horrible as everyone says, then the last thing America needs is to have them released, so that they can be used as iconic rallying points for anti-American sentiment. For example, look at what has happened with the video of that poor Iranian girl who was killed during a peaceful protest. The image of her bleeding to death has swept Iran as a rallying-point for opposition to Iran’s government, as it should. But we don’t want that happening to America. There are major differences between Iran’s brutal reaction to Iranian protesters and those images; the “torturers” were American soldiers who were acting without the approval of their superiors, and therefore do not represent America or our actions. If they were to be released, however, that is exactly what they would be taken to represent. That is deceptive and unfair to America.

Also, I think it is perfectly acceptable for Obama to not want to disclose who is visiting the White House. We have to realize that everything we know about our government, the world knows about our government. What if Obama was having a meeting with the leader of South Korea at the White House. If we find out about it, North Korea finds out about it. This is probably not information we want North Korea knowing about.

I will agree with Stewart, however, with what he said about being “made fun of”. As a public figure, part of the deal is that you are subject to scrutiny, mockery, and you lose much of your privacy. That is just the way it goes. If you want to run for Vice President, you had better be willing to be picked on a bit.

2 Responses to “Who Said Transparency is Good?”