Yes, Virginia, there are honest papers, for as long as hard-hitting reporters mash away at typewriters in smoke-filled rooms while pounding back shots of whisky. For as long as brash reporters bear fedoras across time zones uncountable, you can trust the stories you read here.

Dear Editor: I am a journalism student at Monterey Peninsula College. Some of my conservative friends say these stories are not true. My professors say, “if you see it in the paper it’s so”. Please tell me if these are real news stories.—Jeran O’Camplon, 115 West K Street

Jeran O’Camplon, your conservative friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of Faux News. They do not believe except their own lying eyes. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by logic and reason. All voters, Jeran, whether they be conservative or liberal, are little. In this great universe of ours voters are mere insects, ants, in their intellect, as compared with the world of journalism about them, as measured by the great journalists capable of grasping the whole truth and knowledge.

Yes, Jeran, these stories are true. They are true as certainly as politics and scandals and primaries exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if these stories were not true. It would be as dreary as if there were no talking points. There would be no editorials then, no on-the-ground coverage, no polls to make tolerable this existence. We should have no employment, except in local dailies. The eternal noise with which politics fills the world would be silenced.

Not believe these stories! You might as well not believe in objectivity! You might get your representative to bribe men to watch in all the papers on Monday mornings to catch their truth, but even if nothing could be verified, what would that prove? Nobody sees objectivity in the news, but that is no sign that the news is not objective. The most real things in the world are those that neither politicians nor voters can see. Did you ever see bipartisanship in the White House? Of course not, but that’s no proof that bipartisanship isn’t there. If we report it, it is there. Why, nobody can conceive or imagine all the bipartisanship there exists unseen and unseeable on Pennsylvania Avenue. Nobody but reporters. Nobody but journalists.

You may tear apart the Affordable Care Act and see what makes the prices rise, but there is a veil covering the beltway which not the smartest blogger, nor even the united rantings of all the right-wingers that ever lived, could tear apart. Only editorials, fact-checking, abbreviated quotes, shaming, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal mortality and taxation beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Jeran, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

Not true! Thank God, they are true, and true forever. A thousand years from now, Jeran, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, these stories will continue to influence the votes of the electorate, and other such persons as may find themselves in the voting booth.

Our only doubt is whether you could possibly have conservative friends at journalism school.