Fact: I’m a 64-year-old white guy with a mid-level government job who could stand to lose a few pounds.

Alternative fact: I’m a well-muscled billionaire who can fly.

This seems to be the new normal.

One of the advantages of being my age is that I remember all too well how a previous administration dealt with a press corps they didn’t like or trust.  Richard Nixon’s press secretary, Ron Ziegler, had a running battle with the press before and during Watergate to the point that it was taken for granted by the press that whatever he said was misleading or an outright lie.

Given Mr. Nixon’s well-documented paranoia and hatred of the press, Mr. Ziegler had a tough and thankless job.  On the other hand, Kellyanne Conway seems to relish being combative while trying — and failing miserably — to be charming in a Fox News-like perky and yet devoid-of-reality sort of way.

The Washington press corps has been chastised, and rightly so, for dutifully following the lines and lies of the Republicans during the last eight years and especially during the election of 2016, blowing up little things into major scandals (Hillary’s coughing!) while letting the truly telling and important facts (what’s up with Trump and Russia?) get brushed aside.  The excuse was that was an election campaign and they couldn’t call out the bullshit because then they would be seen as being biased.  Well, guess what, fellas; that’s what they always say, so why not tell the real news and not get lead around by the nose?  They’re going to beat you up no matter what, so why not take the beating for a good cause?

Now that Trump is in office they seem to feel that the gloves can come off.  Well, if they had felt that way a year ago about his blatant bullshit and inability to keep a story straight from the start of one paragraph to the end of it, perhaps we wouldn’t be forced to watch the reincarnation of Josef Goebbels in drag chirping away on “Meet The Press” telling us that their “facts” are “alternative facts.”  Now it’s already baked into the cake.