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TheStar.com | USElection | News media abetting 'carnival of lies'

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TheStar.com | USElection | News media abetting 'carnival of lies'
News media abetting 'carnival of lies'
Sep 20, 2008 04:30 AM
Comments on this story (8)
David Olive

I haven't followed John McCain's career closely enough to know if he is a chronic liar, or became one just to win the White House. That he has lied enough in recent months to disqualify himself for high office is plain. What's not clear is why the news media abets his brazen untruths.

McCain says Barack Obama is willing to lose a war to win the White House. Anyone who's read Obama's elaborate plans for extracting U.S. forces from Iraq over a protracted period of 16 months or longer if necessary – to the chagrin of left-wing Democrats who want out of Mesopotamia immediately – knows that's a lie.

"I know how to win wars! I know how to win wars!" McCain tells supporters. McCain, who graduated fifth from the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., has never developed or executed a war plan. His wartime experience is limited to dropping bombs on Hanoi civilians as a naval pilot and being tortured as a PoW in a war the U.S. lost.

Here's a McCain ad, with Obama's face distorted to make him look like a pervert: "Obama's one accomplishment was to pass a law teaching sex education to children. Before they could read." The law in question teaches kids to recognize and report sexually inappropriate advances by adults. His one accomplishment? In his last, two-year term in the Illinois Senate alone, Obama secured passage of more than 280 bills.

Obama has not compared Sarah Palin to a pig. Obama told supporters that McCain is now presenting himself as an agent of change, "but you can put lipstick on a pig and it's still a pig." Obama's proposed taxes will not "break your family budget," as McCain says. Obama pledges to cut taxes for 95 per cent of households. And his proposed taxes on household earnings of $250,000 or more are at lower rates than those imposed by Ronald Reagan in his second term or by Bill Clinton.

Calling anyone a liar, much less a chronic one, is an allegation not to be made lightly. But journalists go beyond caution. When McCain tells a stretcher, as Mark Twain called them, journos look for a matching Obama fib for the sake of "equivalency."

Thus Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, in addressing McCain's veracity problem, feels obliged to assert that "neither candidate is running the honest, confront-the-hard questions campaign he promised." Apparently Obama should ignore the lies and hope that reciting his universal health plan will carry the day. And ignore the fate of Dems who turned the other cheek, like the swift-boated John Kerry.

We've actually gone backward in journalism, from the days when H.L. Mencken, America's most popular columnist in the 1930s and 1940s, could flat-out call FDR a "mountebank" and worse things. Confronted with a GOP strategy of lying loudly and often in the reasonable expectation that the mendacity will stick, the best the mainstream media can do is talk about a "nasty campaign on both sides," and perhaps note that McCain is shading the truth a bit more aggressively.

It was clear coming into this campaign none of the issues were on the GOP's side, and it's no surprise it soon adopted its time-honoured tactic of character assassination. That the Republicans haven't been called out on this is a journalistic disgrace. It explains the popularity of straight-talking online political sites and The Daily Show.

What's the difference between a campaign of "hard questions" about momentous issues and a carnival of lies? Lipstick. And a pol who once prided himself on being a man of principle and honour.

David Olive's American Scene column appears Saturdays in the World & Comment section.

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Calcan: excellent analysis, as tight and true as it gets

The US media at all levels is so saturated with Repug values and talking points that the weirdest things are taken for granted...like deregulation! No rules!!??? Try that in the school yard or anywhere else, and see how you like it. It's obviously in the interest of a miniscule minority of big$$$ players to have total freedom to chase profits with impunity. The onslaught of the Repugs with their think tanks and their media outlets is all there for people to see, but it's so hard to get the majority to see it because we've all been so brainwashed. Government, democracy, liberalism has contributed so incredibly to the 'good life' in the US and Canada, but the right-wing has managed to have general acceptance of just the opposite. Imagine McCain having the nerve to run as an 'outsider' to Washington and Wall St.!? But imagine how the media must have a right-wing bias for him to be able to get away with it. Staggering media corruption right under our eyes. Great article.

Posted by Saywhat at 7:42 AM Sunday, September 21 2008

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News media abetting 'carnival of lies'

I was brought up in a communist country in the 1940-1950s. The behaviour of most of the press in North America would put the propagandist to shame. The only difference is that my parents always explained to me what was behind the "news". Here most people take the presentations as the Bible truth. God Save us from ignorance!

Posted by fibonacci3 at 8:13 PM Saturday, September 20 2008

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Liars, damn liars and politicians!

Sorry for paraphrasing Mark Twain. I don't think that Republicans and Democrats nor Liberals and Conservatives have any right to say that they're telling the truth. The fact of the matter is that I've been lied to by my wife, on a number of occasions, but I've complete trust in her to do what is necessary for us, to the best of her ability! I extend the same trust and confidence in our "leaders", but I have differences of opinion about their ability, just as I do my wife's. In my opininion Dion lacks ability, whereas Harper has proven his. McCain and Obama I have no opinion on as I'm not a god-damned yank.

Posted by Batonia at 8:06 PM Saturday, September 20 2008

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It's odd

I've watched the much hated Al Jazeera,both Arabic and English, and find them quite high in standards though still very ME centric and tied by new Arab-Qatar laws that disallows them to criticize Arab head of states (but luckily there's no sucking up to the leaders). Al Jazeera is no terrorist channel as Bush made us believe and there's still controversy whether the US army purposely targeted Al Jazeera reporters after 9/11. Fox News on the other hand is very unprofessional and like Calcan mentioned, has a Soviet propagandistic approach supporting the Neo-cons and denouncing the Dems. How Fox news is taken seriously is beyond me and frankly scary.

Posted by bigsaf at 7:18 PM Saturday, September 20 2008

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Lowest common denominator

I suppose the difference is that today the right is willing to say anything to win, while this is not necessarily the same for the left (though I'm sure there are exceptions). This "ends justify the means" attitude fits nicely with a recent study showing that people with right-wing leanings tend to "flinch" more readily, indicating heightened tension/uneasiness/fear. Those who live their lives scared of everything are more likely to bend the rules to feel safe. Anyway, it's a shame Obama has to dignify the lies with a response, but he does.

Posted by Dr_Nik at 7:09 PM Saturday, September 20 2008

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Lies work

David Olive is right on about Republican lies. To understand this phenomenon a little more, one has to remember that after Barry Goldwater's defeat in 1964, the right-wing vowed that in the future, it would set the tone, define its opponents, and control the airwaves. Thus the establishment of well-funded think-tanks pushing a conservative agenda. Then Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingraham, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, U.S. News and World Report, and on and on. The U.S. media is now so saturated with Republican talking points that you only hear what the Republican National Committee wants you to hear. Something like the old Soviet Union.

Posted by calcan at 12:23 PM Saturday, September 20 2008

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Insert Harper for McCain & Dion for Obama

Its uncanny how much this article is describing how the Media in Canada is closing their eyes to the Real Truth when it comes to politics & this Federal Campaign. Not only do I blame the Journalists for their bias reporting but I blame the Media owners for promoting it. Yes! I would also say "Unbelievable"

Posted by Bugzy at 11:47 AM Saturday, September 20 2008

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Good article exposing the extreme conservative bias of US media

The conservatives in the US have had an aggressive campaign since the 90s to bark at the media constantly about their 'liberal' bias and it's had an effect: the media bend over backwards to be 'fair' to republicans. Read that as scared s**tless to offend the Repugs and the Bush/Rove clan. Plus the media is owned by big money people in deep cahoots with the Repugs. McCain has always been an aggressive enabler of deregulation of everything, but particularly banking. Now that lack of regs has had the devastating (possibly catastrophic, jury's still out..) results, McCain is now the champion of regulation and he bashes 'Washington insiders and Wall St. with abandon and the media don't call him on it. He's the ultimate Washington insider (25 years) and he aggressively promoted both the wars and the economic policies that are now blowing up in his face. Every day, he should be facing a barrage of questions about bills he helped pass and statements he made, but nothing. Unbelievable.

Posted by Saywhat at 8:47 AM Saturday, September 20 2008

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__________________
(((start the music)))

HarperLee

Thanks. If the masochistic chickens elect the fox to oversee the chicken coop in November, the chickens will have themselves to blame -- but the MSM will deserve a big chunk of credit also.

Here is a link to Frank Rich's column which appears today in the
New York Times, Truthiness Stages a Comeback:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/op...on&oref=slogin

From that column:

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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Oliver Stone on George W. Bush: "the banality of evil"

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home