Who will smack down all the lies?

[babylonsister]

http://www.salon.com/news/media_criticism/index.html?story=/opinion/feature/2010/11/17/democrats_mainstream_media

Who will smack down all the lies?
Over the past few decades, America's "mainstream media" has been hornswoggled by one big falsehood after another
By Gene Lyons

*

Who will smack down all the lies?



snip//

So is the GOP running Fox, or has Australian billionaire Rupert Murdoch become the unacknowledged boss of the Republican Party? Good question.

snip//


Sometimes, see, Goldilocks can't find the porridge that's just right. Sometimes, when two sources tell very different stories, the truth doesn't lie somewhere between them. Often, somebody's lying. Over the past couple of decades, moreover, America's vaunted mainstream media has found itself hornswoggled by one big falsehood after another.

Historian Rick Perlstein ("Nixonland") applied himself to one recent example: polls showing that most voters in the last congressional election believed President Obama had raised their taxes, although he'd cut them.

Led by Rush Limbaugh, "conservative commentators told them Barack Obama was a tax-mad lunatic. They lied. The mainstream media did not do their job and correct them. The White House was too polite -- 'civil,' just like Obama promised -- to say much. So people believed the lie. From this all else follows."

Some of this is Obama's weakness, his seeming need to enact the Goldilocks role. Drawing attention to falsehoods, it's feared, only spreads them. Confronting a faker like Limbaugh, people pretend, only empowers him. Perlstein argues that the failure also belongs to "mainstream media that acts as if anything millions of followers believe is a priori deserving of respect as heartland folk wisdom."

"When one side breaks the social contract, and the other side makes a virtue of never calling them out on it," he observes, "the liar always wins. When it becomes 'uncivil' to call out liars, lying becomes free."

By succumbing to loser logic, Democrats continue to "mainstream" themselves right down the drain.

[Wednesdays]

1. A lie is NOT the "other side of the story." It's just a lie.

nt

[Bluenorthwest]

2. The 'virtue' of not calling a liar a liar?

When two people face the public, and the first of them says the other is a liar, then the second says the first is an honest broker, what has actually been said? A Republican calls Obama a liar, and then Obama says the Republican is honest. In short, Obama seems to agree with the Republican, as his response to being called a liar is to say the accuser is honest.
GOP: You lie!
DNC: You speak truth!

Only idiots play like that. Idiots. I'm sorry, but the word is idiots. A real person, when wrongfully accused, takes a stand, he or she should not agree with their accusers, nor prasie the accuracy of the accusers.
They say he's a liar, and he agrees with them. It is wreckless. His equation of liars with honest people is also a huge insult to honest people, a slander of the truth itself. He honors liars, to be blunt about it.

[jillan]

3. This administration needs a WarRoom, and fast! Put Grayson in charge!!

He'll shut them up.

[southern_belle]

4. yes and Howard Dean n/t

[Clio the Leo]

5. They need some surrogates, that's for sure...

.... I dont know that I'd agree with that list.

[LawnKorn]

11. The Administration needs a Quick Response Team lead by Allen Grayson

We need a well funded team of researchers to seek out these lies at the root, and shut them down.

Congressman Grayson would be the perfect point man to call the liars out at high noon for a showdown.

[FrenchieCat]

6. Not many here at Du! That's for sure.

[Mimosa]

7. K&R...that's an insightful article. n/t

[flpoljunkie]

8. Thanks, babylonsister. I meant to read this earlier and got sidetracked and forgot.

[LiberalFighter]

9. The mainstream media was not hornswoggled!

They were complicit by not checking and confirming the statements on whether they are true.

[old mark]

10. Certainly not the Obama asministration - they are the meekest bunch in the US...

they have attacked only the Democratic Left that I am aware of.

mark

[LawnKorn]

12. K&R