In Much Ado About Nothing, the redoubtable Dogberry, a local sheriff who doubles as an idiot, is even so the man who uncovers Don John’s plot to slander the maiden Hero. Don John’s henchman Borachio, who previously seduced Hero’s maid, enters Hero’s rooms when Hero is spending the night with Beatrice, and embraces the maid at the window, knowing he will be seen by Hero’s fiancé Claudio, who will think Borachio is embracing Hero. 

Don John and Borachio take their cue directly from the present-day media’s playbook. Here’s Dogberry after he uncovers the plot:

Dogberry: “Marry, sir, they have committed false report; moreover,
they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders;
sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly, they have
verified unjust things; and, to conclude, they are lying
knaves.”

Dogberry’s speech serves as the ultimate verdict on our media. Remember the Covington Kids, the high schoolers, including Nicholas Sandmann, who were slandered by false report and deceptively edited video at the Capitol?

“Marry, sir, they have committed false report”

Or how about the Russia hoax, a three-year media-driven confection, initiated when the head of the FBI relayed a baseless charge to President Trump so that the fact of it being relayed could be used to get the story before the public, leading by turns to the Mueller investigation, designed to hobble the Trump administration? That’s Borachio at the window indeed.

“Moreover, they have spoken untruths”

Or the media claim that Trump fomented an insurrection at the Capitol, when in fact, the week before, he requested 20,000 additional guards for the event, his own public statements on the day were not inflammatory, he called for the protestors (every single one of them unarmed) to leave the Capitol peacefully, and within two hours they did so:

“Secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady.”

Ashli Babbitt was a lady belied indeed. And the latest lie from our tinfoil-hat reporters is the yearlong censoring of the lab leak theory, enforced by Facebook, in the role of the henchman Borachio, forbidding as “misinformation” the well-supported theory that the WIV (Wuhan Institute of Virology) virus was loosed upon the planet by a lab leak. A flood of evidence finally overwhelmed the media’s levy:

“And, to conclude, they are lying knaves.”

In the play, after Don John’s plot unravels, Claudio (unlike our newsfolk) is repentant, and all the more so because he believes Hero died of shame at the altar when he accused her of being untrue. In fact, like Trump, she survived the attack, and was resurrected at the play’s climax. Here is the scene that arises after Hero removes her veil:

Claudio: Another Hero!”

Hero: “Nothing certainer: One Hero died defiled, but I do live.”

Don Pedro: “The former Hero! Hero that is dead!”

Leonato: “She died, my lord, but whiles her slander lived.”

 

Here’s hoping we see this scene reprised in the 2024 presidential election.