December 24, 2010

Truth-O-Meter, Pants on Fire

Justin Katz

The Wall Street Journal doesn't give PolitiFact a grade, but one suspects it wouldn't even reach the level of "half true":

So the watchdog news outfit called PolitiFact has decided that its "lie of the year" is the phrase "a government takeover of health care." Ordinarily, lies need verbs and we'd leave the media criticism to others, but the White House has decided that PolitiFact's writ should be heard across the land and those words forever banished to describe ObamaCare.

"We have concluded it is inaccurate to call the plan a government takeover," the editors of PolitiFact announce portentously. "'Government takeover' conjures a European approach where the government owns the hospitals and the doctors are public employees," whereas ObamaCare "is, at its heart, a system that relies on private companies and the free market." PolitiFact makes it sound as if ObamaCare were drawn up by President Friedrich Hayek, with amendments from House Speaker Ayn Rand. ...

PolitiFact's decree is part of a larger journalistic trend that seeks to recast all political debates as matters of lies, misinformation and "facts," rather than differences of world view or principles. PolitiFact wants to define for everyone else what qualifies as a "fact," though in political debates the facts are often legitimately in dispute.

And that's precisely why they wish to define "facts." For the same reason that the left typically strives to define its preferred cultural innovations in terms of "science." Facts and science are supposed to be the objective foundations on which our opinions are built; treat one side's opinion as a lie, and its structure will necessarily lean the other way.

The journalists behind PolitiFact across the country may not be self-aware purveyors of malicious propaganda, but the "lie of the year" (like the local variation on the Social Security Ponzi scheme question) proves them unable to control their rhetorical experiments for their own opinions.

Comments, although monitored, are not necessarily representative of the views Anchor Rising's contributors or approved by them. We reserve the right to delete or modify comments for any reason.

If the Left put one percent of the effort they put into propaganda into thinking about how the real world works and what is genuinely, factually best for society, there would be no Left.

Have to hand it to them, the Left has the best BS artists in human history. Even Goebbels is quoted as admiring them back in the 30s.

Posted by: BobN at December 24, 2010 1:13 PM

Lie of 2010: Death Panels

Lie of the Decade: Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Merry Christmas!

Happy Festivus!

Posted by: Swazool at December 24, 2010 1:32 PM

Thanks Swazool,
For pointing out the dangers of selective memory and the lack of introspection which makes this blog what it is.
OldTimeLefty

Posted by: OldTimeLefty at December 24, 2010 1:42 PM

So,OTL,if this blog is so bad,why in hell do you pollute it with your inane left wing crap?
You must have NO life at all.Probably just sitting down there in Exeter looking at old tapes of Castro.

Posted by: joe bernstein at December 24, 2010 2:49 PM

Hey Joe Merry Christmas you bitter old fool. Now go spend some more time calling talk shows and acting like a know it all.

Posted by: triplerichard at December 24, 2010 3:27 PM

"purveyors of malicious propaganda"

The Top Ten... in no particular order

Michael Savage
Fox News
Rush Limbaugh
Glenn Beck
Sean Hannity
Ann Coulter
Michelle Malkin
The Pea-Party
The GOP
Bill Oreilly

IMHO

Posted by: Sammy at December 24, 2010 5:59 PM

triplerichard-another sh*tmop heard from.I guess you must spend a lot of time listening to talk radio.
I only call in on subjects I do know about.About the only time you show up here is to add some ignorant remark.
sammy-olbermann,schultz,maddow,malloy,rhodes,behar,colmes
we can do this all day

Posted by: joe bernstein at December 24, 2010 9:50 PM

Judging by the number of libtards posting on this site, it's no wonder Fox News is smoking other channels in the ratings. If they ever did a viewer poll, you lefties would probably out number the righties.

Posted by: Max Diesel at December 25, 2010 12:11 PM

Feliz Navidad
joe and others, to help you with your question of why I bother writing in this blog, consider it missionary work. I do!
OldTimeLefty

Posted by: OldTimeLefty at December 25, 2010 9:10 PM

OTL-you'd have better luck selling Israeli flags in Qom.

Posted by: joe bernstein at December 25, 2010 10:44 PM
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