Truthiness

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"John McCain's is not the resume that a presidential candidate wants to advertise as America faces its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression," writes N.Y. Times columnist Frank Rich in the 9.21 edition. "That's why the main thrust of the McCain campaign has been to cover up his history of economic malpractice.

"McCain has largely pulled it off so far, under the guidance of Steve Schmidt, a Karl Rove protege. A Rovian political strategy by definition means all slime, all the time. But the more crucial Rove game plan is to envelop the entire presidential race in a thick fog of truthiness.

"All campaigns, Barack Obama's included, engage in false attacks. But McCain, Sarah Palin and their surrogates keep repeating the same lies over and over not just to smear their opponents and not just to mask their own record. Their larger aim is to construct a bogus alternative reality so relentless it can overwhelm any haphazard journalistic stabs at puncturing it.

"When a McCain spokesman told Politico a week ago that 'we're not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say' about the campaign's incessant fictions, he was channeling a famous Bush dictum of 2003: 'Somehow you just got to go over the heads of the filter.'

"In Bush's case, the lies lobbed over the heads of the press were to sell the war in Iraq. That propaganda blitz, devised by a secret White House Iraq Group that included Rove, was a triumph. In mere months, Americans came to believe that Saddam Hussein had aided the 9/11 attacks and even that Iraqis were among the hijackers. A largely cowed press failed to set the record straight.

"If you doubt that the big lies are sticking, look at the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll. Half of voters now believe in the daily McCain refrain that Obama will raise their taxes. In fact, Obama proposes raising taxes only on the 1.9 percent of households that make more than $250,000 a year and cutting them for nearly everyone else.

"You know the press is impotent at unmasking this truthiness when the hardest-hitting interrogation McCain has yet faced on television came on The View. Barbara Walters and Joy Behar called him on several falsehoods, including his endlessly repeated fantasy that Palin opposed earmarks for Alaska. Behar used the word 'lies' to his face. The McCains are so used to deference from 'the filter' that Cindy McCain later complained that The View picked 'our bones clean.'

"In our news culture, Behar, a stand-up comic by profession, looms as the new Edward R. Murrow."

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Posted by Jeffrey Wells on September 20, 2008 at 11:02 PM

comment #1

Chicago48 says ...

There are several things about this campaign that are unfair, esp since Palin entered the fray. Both sides are treating her with kid gloves. Do you think the same would be true if Hillary was running? Would they cut the debates short and make the questions simpler? This totally smells and I feel it's wrong for the O campaign to give Palin the easy way out,because she's "new" at this. B-S!

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/obama-vs-mccain-which-presidential-candidate-has-the-best-campaign-knickknacks-935238.html
You gotta love the button!

Posted by Chicago48 at September 21, 2008 4:48 AM

comment #2

drbob says ...

Nothing about the Iraq war was lobbed over the heads of the media. They ate it right up.

Posted by drbob at September 21, 2008 6:05 AM

comment #3

Howlingman says ...

You can repeat the same lie a hundred times but only have to issue an apology for those lies once. Now what's going to stick in the minds of the voting public most?

Posted by Howlingman at September 21, 2008 6:52 AM

comment #4

MilkMan says ...

Drbob is right. The media is as complicit in this war as the current administration. The media in this country, and I'm talking the major media, the corporate-owned media, which is pretty much everything that's not a blog, is nothing more than the PR-wing of the government. There have been renovations to the Military-Industrial Complex, necessary renovations that started construction after Vietnam and Watergate, so now, calling it The Military-Industrial Complex does not signify how truly large of a complex it really is. More like the Military-Industrial-Media/Popular Entertainment Complex. Extra space for extra fun. Bring the whole family.

Posted by MilkMan at September 21, 2008 9:31 AM

comment #5

MilkMan says ...

You know who else is complicit? The citizens of this country, who don't do anything when confronted with criminal behavior, who would rather sit down and avert their eyes away from the mess. Because we would rather play dead than be uncomfortable.

Posted by MilkMan at September 21, 2008 9:43 AM

comment #6

Edward says ...

Milkman, it's not just the citizens, but the Democratic Congress which refuses to confront Bush/Cheney and instead roll over and continue to fund the war and whatever else they're asked to do. Shameful.

Posted by Edward at September 21, 2008 10:28 AM

comment #7

George Prager says ...

"John McCain showed his personality this week and made some of us fearful."
--George Will this morning on ABC THIS WEEK.

Posted by George Prager at September 21, 2008 10:45 AM

comment #8

MilkMan says ...

Dear Jeffery Wells and the people of Hollywood Elsewhere:

This place sucks.
A lot of people who come here now are exactly the type of people I try and avoid in real life.
Malevolent, filled with rage at nothing in particular.

Some of you are so vague.
You don't ever say anything interesting, yet you come here day after day and say the same uninteresting things over and over again.
When you get bored you verbally assault your host, yet if someone were to cut in front of you at Starbucks you wouldn't say anything.
You would just let them get away with it because you're a tiny little person.
That's all some of you are.
Tiny little people with tiny little minds who can't get over some tiny little event that happened to them when they were kids.

Jeff deserves some respect.
He knows this city as well as you do, especially since some of you have never even been here, or you've just visited. That's why most of you sound like tourists, like you've just paid too much for a shitty meal at a restaurant where all the tourists go.

You make this an ugly place to be.
Maybe I'll come back when Jeff figures out a way to make this place pretty again.
Hopefully his first step will be to make some of you disappear. Because that's what some of you deserve.
To never be heard ever again, not here.
It's not your First Amendment Right to harass people and threaten them.
That's not American.
That's Eastern European.

The amount of White Rage in this country is a cause for a concern.
Because when white people have nothing, then things start getting serious.

I think this place is a bad place for me to be.
I'm starting not to like people for strange reasons.
It's time for me to leave.

I hope Jeffrey finds a way to make some good money out of this.
He deserves it.

Milkman

Posted by MilkMan at September 21, 2008 3:31 PM

comment #9