I’m glad that Ezra Klein wrote this column about how incredibly dishonest Paul Ryan’s speech was, but my reaction is still much like my reaction to fingernails on a chalkboard. Mr. Klein is so clearly pained by his inability to perform standard he said/she said/they both do it journalism that he’s practically begging people on the right not to send him hate mail. It’s like, “Oh my God, there’s no way to spin this as anything but a completely unprecedented level of dishonesty, but that makes us look biased. Don’t shoot the messenger. We’re not biased, I swear.”
I like the fact that Mr. Klein is willing to spell out his feelings because it’s honest. But it’s also telling. The extreme reluctance with which Mr. Klein finally concludes that he must call a spade a spade just demonstrates how much the GOP can get away with in the corporate media. After all, Klein has a lot more courage and integrity than your average corporate journalist. A lot more. And even he feels like he’s being roasted on a spit just by having to report this depressing news about the Romney campaign’s dishonesty.
Colbert famously told GWB that “facts have a liberal bias.”
But that really isn’t true. Facts have no bias. They are what they are.
But more important than pointing out the lies and enumerating is asking the all important question, “If the GOP really felt its policies and ideology were that good for the nation and that they could convince the nation of that fact, why do they need to lie?”
David Dayen opined that the media does not see themselves as journalists anymore but more as theater critics.
And watch for Sally Kohn’s termination from FoxNews.
well at least she was paying attention:
and when you lose the great reichwing wurlitzer you’re in deep shit.
WOW! Everyone read that link! I’m flabbergasted! Absolute truth! From FOX NEWS!!!!
That’s from foxnews.com … I assume she wouldn’t be able to say that on the air.
I also noticed that one of the Ryan lies she pointed out was the basis of the convention’s dishonest “We Built It” theme, but you wouldn’t know that from how she phrased it.
Quite an amazing exercise in journalism from Fox. Makes you wonder what’s going on with them. The article is worth keeping at hand and quoting from it on their website every time one of their on-air faux journalists parrots the Ryan lies. Great ad material too.
I found this kind of interesting:
Deep bunch, them Ryans. Might go some way toward understanding where the “dreamy eyes” come from.
So he chose to be part of the problem.
Alas, no one considers himself to be part of the problem.
A nice collection of members of the press (and some bloggers) who noticed.
Will this be motivation for Dems at their convention to err on the side of honesty? Because the press will be desperate to draw an equivalence, however false.
(I’m assuming that Romney’s convention speech will meet or exceed Ryan’s dishonesty, simply because it’s too late to do anything else. They’re pretty much committed.)
That’s a good point. The press will be all over the transcripts trying to find anything to draw an equivalence.
Just as an example, the Dems are gonna have to stick to the line about the GOP trying to end Medicare “as we know it,” and even with that modification, half the press will probably pronounce it a lie anyway.
because he writes for that omnipotent, in the tank for BHO, “liberal” media, and is therefore a fearless warrior for first truth, then justice, and finally, the American way, although he’s not invulnerable like Superman.
The reality is, “the American way” in terms of the corporate media, and as the wmd lies they facillitated made clear, has long been trumped by and been more valued than the unvarnished truth. That’s what this young Superman is up against.
Another reality is, given the “Bush on steroids” nature and character a Romney admin will undoubtedly have, nipping it in the bud now as opposed to putting off the war on truth in the form of future foreign misadventures, etc, is liable to be very costly to this country and its people, and more so than the one Bush waged.
And the last reality I’ll address here, is the fact that those in the media that don’t draw a line in the sand now as he and others appear to be, are gonna be enablers of whatever the costs of a Romney presidency might extract from us, assuming a concerted effort on their part would be instrumental in derailing the Romney train.
If he thinks he’s battling his conscience and a rightwingnut character assassination machine now, just wait until a Romney admin helps Israel say, bomb Iran or something.
Journalists/news orgs have an opportunity with this to play “Dead Zone”, without ever picking up a rifle.
Seems like Mr Klein does not really get the difference between bias and journalism.
Of course, neither does the rest of the press.
Don’t forget, Young Ezra has interviewed the Zombie-eyed Granny-starver a time or two. So I bet he has Lyin’ Ryan’s personal number. And Young Ezra certainly doesn’t want to lose access.
Over at Kos, Hunter has a rather mystified piece about the massive failure by the press, most notably Politico, to call Ryan lies lies.
I think Klein’s own agonies confirm what I never entirely believed: that Big Media and its functionaries really are scared to death of the wingnut hate mail they’ll get, and the blowback from advertisers and sources that the Koch/Adelson/Rove/RyanRomney hate machine will extort. They’re not so afraid of the minions who write the hatemail, but of the plutocracy they’re serving. Which makes the prospect for American democracy far more shaky than even I imagined, and no one’s accused me of optimism in a long time.
So where does that leave Dems, liberals, leftists? We probably have the brains and talent to make even more and better lies, but do we have the kind of consciences, the anti-Americanism to do that? Or do we risk hoping that maybe in the end the founders’ faith will win out after all, and in the winnowing and sifting, the lies will blow away? Neither path is straight or easy, but it will be a historic decision which we choose.
Please give me a direct quote from Ryan that is false–please use his exact words
I’ve just now had a chance to review claims that Ryan “lied”.
What a joke!
You should have said that the liberal media noticed…Sally Kohn is a self described “Progressive voice on Fox News”.
Look at the so-called “lies”.
The last truck produced at the Janesville plant was produced on April 23rd, 2009, after Obama took office and his “Stimulous” was passes–Fact
Obama reduced Medicare payment to providers–Fact.
The Simpson-Bowles commission made recommendations that Obama did not act on–Fact
S&P downgraded the U.S. credit rating under the Obama administration–Fact
The top priority of the Romney-Ryan ticket is to protect the poor–well, this statement doesn’t really lend itself to “fact checking” unless you can read minds. You might claim that, in your OPINION Romney’s policies would “hurt the poor”, but that’s an opinion. Even if it a “fact” that a given transfer payment program to the “poor” would be reduced or eliminated, if the elimination of that government subsidy leads either to debt reduction, thereby ensuring the solvency of “safety net” programs in the future, or spurs economic growth, thereby leading to increased opportunity for the “poor”, then you are indeed protecting the poor. This is a policy disagreement that is not a factual assertion.
Any other “lies” that need to be addressed?
Here’s what’s actually happening–Ryan is showing he can play your game, and you’re scared shitless.
Have you watched MSNBC? Every single minority or female speaker on Tuesday ignored? McConnell’s joke about Obama and the PGA tour “racist?
And we’re in the alternative universe? Wow.
http://i47.tinypic.com/2jg2olt.jpg
I’ll check my sources, and get back to you!
No you won’t. Your sources are the ones that created the lies in the first place.
http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/106730/ryan-most-dishonest-convention-speech-five-lies-gm-medicare-def
icit-medicaid
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_breakfast_table/features/2012/_2012_republican_n
ational_convention/paul_ryan_s_speech_included_an_incredible_string_of_false_or_misleading_statement
s_.html
Here are a couple of sources you might want to check.
What’s odd (in my view, at least) is that there are plenty of issues on which Ryan could have attacked Obama without lying.
Also odd was bringing up the auto bailout at all. To oversimplify, Obama saved the auto industry—and much of the related industrial economy across the Midwest—when many Republicans (including Romney) advised against it and predicted it would fail. Why bring up an issue that works for your opponent? And why lie about it—especially a lie that is easily disproven.
I looked at these sources already–that’s what my original post was based on.
No Progressive in this blog has been able to put forth an actual quote from Ryan that is Factually untrue…
The Obama campaign has done the same thing…for example, take the Coptic cancer ad–reprehensible, but there is actually no “lie” in the ad.
The Left is just pissed that we have someone that can play the same game.
And that you know it’s going to rub off on Romney. That’s why Ryan was a brilliant pick for V.P.
“No Progressive in this blog has been able to put forth an actual quote from Ryan that is Factually untrue…”
Aren’t you clever. It’s mostly “lying by omission” and no one is falling for it. Ryan and Romney personally and repeatedly stand up and say “Obama cut Medicare” and just let the audience fill in the gaps with their worse fears. Honesty would include admitting that no benefits were cut and that most of the saved funds to providers get replaced by ACA funding. (And that the same “cuts” showed up in Ryan’s budget.)
Also the Obama campaign did not produce the Coptic cancer ad – that was an independent PAC.
But I suspect you know all this…
Well, that’s always the question when dealing with the “conservative” male—either their brains are completely poisoned from the rightwing sewage they ingest 24/7 or they are utterly intellectually dishonest.
Here we are most likely dealing with an intellectually dishonest one, given the phony and tendentious way he “proves” there was no “lying” by Weinermobile Ryan. Thus, all poor Ryan was saying was that the credit downgrade simply happened when Obammy was prez, not that he had anything to do with it! Pure intellectual dishonesty.
Leave aside the fact that the “hardheaded” conservatives are (supposedly) claiming to be the “truth-tellers” about the unsustainable costs of Medicare, but that when the Dems cut actual program costs (not benefits), it is not supported by the “hardheaded realist” party or Lyin’ Ryan, but instead dishonestly attacked for political gain as a “massive cut!” to the value of the program to beneficiaries.
And will conservatives also make Rmoney take full responsibility for every claim which made by pro-Rmoney PACs in future, as this one does with the Coptic cancer ad? The question answers itself.
Anyway, it really doesn’t get any worse or more dishonest than this, and is, quite frankly, what one would have expected from a 21st century Goebbels Big Lie machine. But this fool thinks Ryan is really the truth-teller. Appalling and revolting. But that’s “conservatism”.
The Republicans cannot be so naive to believe that the press would not notice the lies perpetrated by Ryan. And certainly, Romney was apprised of the speech and its contents beforehand.
One can only guess that the Romney-Ryan campaign and its advisors believe that they can get away with it, that if you just repeat a falsehood often enough it will become the reality. It is in your face dirty tricks and they must think it will work.
Some of us thought the WMD lies were so blatant that the press and all the Congressional Democrats would surely notice. That’s when I finally got it that Americans have a very tenuous relationship to reality and the truth and it’s bipartisan.
FWIW my reading of Klein was different than Booman’s. I think Klein’s unhappiness is for the Republic, and is based on the realization that the VP candidate from one of our only 2 major parties can be so flagrantly dishonest in his most important national speech to date. Not, or at least much less so, on being forced to give up any pretense of balance.
Klein has called Republicans on their BS many times with little regard for phony “balance” and deserves credit, I think, as one of the straighter shooters in Big Media. That wingers sometimes exploit his honesty about occasional fibs or bad ideas on the Democratic side with citations of the “even the liberal Ezra Klein” variety shouldn’t be held against him.
Hmm. I went back and re-read the Klein piece, which I’d first seen this morning. And Booman’s right. The strain of Broderist false balance that infects the Post might be slow moving, but is evidently insidious and Klein does seem to have a case.
No doubt encouraged by the managing editor.
Drinking game: Hold off until Etch-a-Sketch tells a bigger whopper than Lyin’ Ryan.
It’s gonna take at least a couple drinks before I can even bring myself to watch Romney’s speech.
Well, we’ve all been reading Klein since before he got picked up by the WaPo, and he wasn’t always this way. I’m not convinced its the readers, so much as it’s the bosses.
Klein’s pathetic. I used to like him when he wrote at The American Prospect. Anyone willing to sell-out and give up their autonomy about what they write shouldn’t be a journalist.
He’s not pathetic. He’s actually very good. Notice that he’s willing to not only say what needs to be said but to actually tell the reader about his feelings. The only problem is a system that puts those feelings in place.
He doesn’t have to play by the system putting those feelings in place. He could play like Dan Froomkin, and tell the system to get bent. It’s not going to change by doing it this way. There needs to be a few more martyrs.
Selling Romney was awesome at Bain — after two months of denying that he hadn’t worked there for the past thirteen years.
Romney is a good Mormon.
Jeb! “My bro kept us safe for eight years.” 9/11, Abu Ghraib, Katrina, financial meltdown, etc. don’t count.
The press noticed this time, but will they notice in ‘016?
I keep thinking this campaign is something between a media experiment for the GOP, and an inoculation for future campaigns.
I mean, maybe it’s just a coincidence that the GOP have settled on two of the biggest yet stylistically dissimilar liars: Romney the brazen liar who lies with what appears to be total unselfconsciousness, and Ryan, the equally brazen but smooth car-salesman liar. It could be a coincidence, but consider:
If, on the one hand, the GOP were all but assured they were going to lose the Presidential campaign, and were reasonably confident that the down-ticket races wouldn’t be affected significantly either way, they might use this campaign as a sort of laboratory experiment to see just how much lying they can get away with before someone actually calls them on it.
They could count the lies that slip under the radar, and study the ones that get caught, in order to fine tune the technique. It’s like an inverted version of Frank Luntz-style polling. It’s also vital feedback for the to read a piece like this by Klein, because it shows them just how willing the media are to cooperate if they can just keep certain appearances in place.
At the same time, it gets the public and the media used to bigger and more blatant lies. Keep committing outrages and keep shocking the consciences of those who still have any to shock, and eventually they’ll get inured to it, much as it was impossible to keep up with all the outrages of the Bush era.
Remember how, at the onset of the Iraq war, when discussing budget items and various gov’t spending, it was common to hear reporters say, “that’s right, that’s ‘billion’ with a ‘b?'”
Haven’t heard that in a while, have you? And by the time the ‘016 election season rolls around, it’s going to take lying on a stupendous scale to get anyone’s attention.
Or it’s easy to see the possibility of things ending up that way. As it is, growing segments of the electorate are polarized to the extent that one side automatically assumes that whatever their politicians say is true, and that whatever the opposing side says is false.
If things carry on like they are for the next 4 years, the media will start allying themselves into those camps too. Some might say that Fox News vs MSNBC already represent that sort of polarization, but I call bs: Fox has nothing remotely equivalent to a liberal version of Morning Joe, nor imo do they have anything approaching the sort of investigative journalism/media analysis of a Chris Hays or Rachel Maddow.
But anyway, if there isn’t an overwhelming counter punch somewhere in the public sphere, media or grassroots, against all this lying, then media coverage of everything is going to get really bad.
Have long considered that the impeachment of Bill Clinton could have been a GOP inoculation project. Not among the wankers and dirtbags that led the charge — they’re too emotionally driven and tend to lack synthetic intelligence — but the handful of architects and planners in the employ of wealth and power.
However, this experiment wasn’t well-constructed. It’s already jumped into down-ticket races and is likely to get worse for the GOP over the next two months.
“However, this experiment wasn’t well-constructed. It’s already jumped into down-ticket races and is likely to get worse for the GOP over the next two months.”
That’s the thing, I think it was entirely unplanned. There was a lot of backlash from the GOP establishment and the candidates in the down-ticket races, or at least a lot of chatter to that effect when Ryan was announced.
It’s the reaction afterward that I’m talking about now; I expected a strategy of “we never would have really cut Medicare and SocSec, we knew the President would veto any attempts to do so if it even got past the Senate, we just wanted to send a strong message.”
Instead, the GOP apparently has embraced a strategy of flat-out lying, changing terms like “make the tough decisions,” “entitlement reform,” “doing the right thing,” and reworking them into “saving Medicare,” “protecting our seniors,” or my favorite new dodge, “protecting the helpless,” or whatever it is along those lines.
It’s an astonishing strategy, one guaranteed to cross the line all over the place. And it’s that adaptation to the Ryan pick–an unwelcome and potentially disastrous development, from an establishment perspective–that has me thinking along these lines of some massive experiment. If they stick with it, I bet they’ll be able to stave off a good deal of the down-ticket bloodbath the Ryan pick originally presaged.
Would never have worked if the party that passed Social Security and Medicare had never, not for one moment, let the public forget that Republicans fought against both programs before they were enacted and have never stopped fighting to dismantle them. Problem is that too many Democrats agree with Republicans.
I know this isn’t a popular sentiment around here, but if the Dems manage to retain about the same amount of power as they currently have, be prepared for Simpson-Bowles (or is it Bowles-Simpson) to make a comeback in a big way.
Some people are better at seeing things the way they are than the way they would like them to be.
Given a choice between ClintonII and maybe not ClintonII, Democrats/liberals stated their preference. One would have to be delusional not to have seen the “maybe not” fall by the wayside at some point in the six months after 11/08. (Seemed evident to me before he took office.) Those that should have been out there screaming at that point should have been progressives. Would have drowned out the loony teabaggers. But no — protecting a Democratic POTUS from a wingnut fringe once again became more important than principles, ethics, and fairness.
If anyone had told me in 1974 that public policy for the next forty years would be nothing but regressive, I would have laughed and pointed out that Tricky Dicky was on his way out. How wrong I was. How sad it makes me feel that so few get that.