“What if it turns out that when the press calls a lie a lie, nobody cares?”
That’s the question asked by Atlantic editor-in-chief James Bennet (8/28/12) after a raft of Pinocchios and flaming pants failed to sway the Romney campaign from its position that “we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by factcheckers.”
I think that’s the wrong question, though. The real question is: Does the press have the courage to call a lie a lie—and stick by it?
Glenn Kessler
It’s hard to be hopeful about that when you have one of the media’s most prominent factcheckers, the Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler (9/1/12), explicitly downplaying the importance of honesty in politics. Under the headline “The Truth? C’mon, This Is a Political Convention,” Kessler wrote:
For all the outrage (on the left) about misrepresentations and misinformation in Rep. Paul Ryan’s speech accepting the Republican nomination for vice president, my reaction was: par for the course.
We are, of course, talking about a political convention. The whole point is for the party to put its best foot forward to the American people. By its very nature, that means downplaying unpleasant facts, highlighting the positive and knocking down the opposing team.
Kessler maintained that until Ryan’s speech, his “impression was that…the Republicans were generally on good behavior”—despite the fact that the first night was “devoted to the political exploitation of a single Obama gaffe—’You didn’t build that’—the Republicans blatantly misrepresent…with virtually every speaker making reference to it.” That’s an awfully low standard for good behavior!
Kessler excused the mendacity of Ryan’s speech on the grounds that it wasn’t as deceptive as the speech Sen. Zell Miller gave at the 2004 RNC—a speech that was lavishly praised at the time for its effectiveness. Kessler gave Romney credit for comparative honesty as well: “He repeated some claims that have earned him Four Pinocchios (such as Obama going on an ‘apology tour’ overseas) but he passed up many others.”
Are you beginning to see why politicians are not particularly afraid of factcheckers?
One reason these schmenges aren’t concerned with being called on their prefabricated prevarications is that they know the corpress won’t follow up. Yes, they will often mention them – and “mention” is indicative of the level of significance they attach to lying – but then they’ll move on to what’s truly “important”.
And when they do mention them, context is almost always lacking. No pattern is discerned. Most every instance stands on its own, and quickly fades into oblivion.
Now, this is usually a phenomenon reserved for conservative and Republican transgressions. Democrats, especially those favored for their “moderation”, certainly benefit from it, as well – most often when lying to advance corporate and military interests – but because the Limbaughs and O’Reillys pound away at Democratic deceptions, conceded and concocted, the mainstream media keeps them in the public eye on the rationalization of there being a “controversy”.
What we’re left with is a milieu in which honesty becomes not an immutable value, but a manufactured “quality” wholly unrelated to any allegiance to the truth, such that a stone story teller like Ryan can project an aura of “sincerity”, while spewing utter tripe about his plan to “save Medicare”.
So to go all Lewis Carroll on you
That’s a pretty goddamn cloudy looking glass, isn’t it?
Seriously what we are left with, is people who will believe every word they speak, even if when you string them together, they make a bald face lie.
This is the double think we have all heard railed against in the book; yet as was said years ago, when Fascism arrives in America, it will wearing the flag and be thought of as uniquely American in origin.
They did not lie; take the ‘Obama said ‘you didn’t build your business’. The words “Obama”, “you”, “did not”, “build” “your” and “Business” are ligite words and can be found anywhere; so the words, all by themselves are not lies. Once you take out the comma’s and quote marks, and glue them into one sentence, then it’s a lie, but they will claim that is not what they said, when they spoke all the commas and quote marks were there, you just weren’t listening.
That is why we need Limburger and Co, so they can tell us what the person meant, because it seems like no one else can figure it out. Even the Candidates themselves. There next trick will be to hand out dictionary’s and say “my Speech is all in there, you just have to figure out which words to take out”.
No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated National Will. … When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will ever say “Heil” to him, nor will they call him “Führer” or “Duce.” But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of “O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!” — Dorothy Thompson, (1935).
The abandonment of a commitment to honesty is a sign of terminal imperial decay.
Now fair has put up a bunch of stories here lambasting the press for not pointing out those things that the Republican party said during their convention that you on the left take umbridge with and that is” fair” enough.We on the right- do expect FAIR to carry the same amount of stories next week pointing to the same inconsistencies regarding the DNC.Wont happen.Do you not see that as Fair attacks the press for not doing their job (the job of being a non partisan fact checking mill)……that FAIR is the worse offender of them all.Fair makes FOX news look like a centrist news organization.They make Bill O’rielly,Hannity,Rush and Ann Coulter look like they are non aligned.They are worse in fact.They have a week to put something into print.Usually they blow minutia out of all proportion.It is called defending a guilty part.We saw Bill Clinton do that in his speech last week.His excuse would be he is a good lawyer helping his client.Actually he was dis barred for lying under oath,and before the American people.But that is beside the point.Actually……..that may be the point!!!!!!Welcome to the carnival on the left
What in god’s good green earth are you talking about? Honestly, more unintelligible gibberish. If you can’t stand that FAIR points out, week after week, that your party and your heroes are a bunch of goddamn sycophantic sociopaths, liars, and budding totalitarians, then get the fuck out of the forum already. Jesus!
Kessler: “The whole point is for the party to put its best foot forward to the American people.”
By lying?!
If that’s their “best foot,” who in their right mind would want them as leaders of the free world?!
We at least need to get The Truth in Reporting Act back in place. Canada was able to ban Fox because the have it.
I like to say, “Republicans are good at what they do, but what they do isn’t good.”
They’re good at staying on message, repeating it so often it become the very stuff of some people’s “thought.” They’re good at lying through blue eyes as if witty and charming. They’re good at forgetting Bush while instituting his policies and installing his people. They’re good at ignoring wild fires and floods, quipping one-liners of dismissal, while promoting the main cause of this collective disaster.
It’s as if Karl Rove calculated that lies work well, they stick, and corrections are lost in the pathetic but necessary attempt to catch up. But what do we expect from someone who admires Machievelli (who basically counseled the ruler to lie, cheat, even kill for “the cause”)? Rove is a master at this, and he’s winning again.
Such winning comes packaged in the flag, buoyed by sanctimonious self-righteousness, no matter how devilish in design and result.
Tim, Thanks for getting what I was trying to say.Im sure you were the only one.And no- I can’t stand that FAIR points out that MY party(as you call it) is all the things you just named.Because that is not their stated job.I would be fine if they came out and said we exist to attack every news story that is right of center.Then we could see they are just an attack group working on the lefts behalf(as you just stated).I just HATE the sanctimonious hypocrisy of acting like they are open minded.
And Brad.Dems are good at avoiding the last four years.The next four will be more of the same if he wins.You knock the right but what has Obama done, that has not ended in utter disaster?