• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

No Justins, No Peace

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Joe Lieberman disappointingly reemerged to remind us that he’s still alive.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

We still have time to mess this up!

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Everybody saw this coming.

… among the most cringeworthy communications in the history of the alphabet!

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Mobile Menu

  • Winnable House Races
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • Balloon Juice 2023 Pet Calendar (coming soon)
  • COVID-19 Coronavirus
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • War in Ukraine
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • 2021-22 Fundraising!
You are here: Home / More on Fact Checking

More on Fact Checking

by $8 blue check mistermix|  January 6, 20128:29 am| 96 Comments

This post is in: Our Failed Media Experiment

FacebookTweetEmail

Greg Marx at the Columbia Journalism Review takes another look at the FactCheck.org dust up and gets very close to what’s going on:

But I think the situation also reflects exactly what critics like Hemingway and Greenwald allege: fact-checking, as practiced, is in part an effort to shape the public political discourse; the fact-checkers have set their sights on identifying not only which statements are true, but which are legitimate.

This impulse is reflected in the consensus among fact-checkers that the “end Medicare” attack was one of the worst offenses of the year. (In addition to Politifact’s designation, both Factcheck.org and the Post’s Kessler included it on a list of year-end lowlights.) The claim is, at most, semantically untrue. It was more plausibly unfair and, in some contexts, potentially deceptive. But some of the ways in which the Medicare attack was presented were indisputably uncivil, and arguably demagogic.

And that seems to be a big part of what bothers the fact-checkers. In their year-end write-ups, both Politifact and Factcheck.org point to an inflammatory ad produced by a liberal advocacy group that shows an elderly senior citizen being dislodged from her wheelchair and dumped over the side of a cliff. It was something of an odd choice, as an earlier Politifact item on the ad itself found its claim that the GOP plan would “privatize Medicare” to be “mostly true.” (A separate item found the ad’s assertion that the plan would leave the country “without Medicare” to be “false.”) But the ad’s outrageous imagery buttresses a larger point the fact-checkers want to make: the “end Medicare” line was a bit of Democratic demagoguery designed to scare seniors, which has no place in responsible political debate.

Add “for Democrats” to the end of that last sentence, and this is spot-on.

Factcheckers have set themselves up to be arbiters of what can be said and how it can be said, and since they’re part of the MSM, they adopt the rules of the MSM: Democrats must be civil and reasonable at all times, because the status quo is that Democrats are expected to play the role of the adults in the room. The “end Medicare” ads colored outside those lines, so Democrats got their hands slapped.

I think most of us have decided to stop paying close attention to Polifact after the Medicare incident, and I don’t consider that much of a loss. The right was only going to pay attention to factcheckers insofar as they could cherry-pick the pinocchios or pants-on-fires to stick it to the left. Since the left was the only group paying close attention to Polifact, there’s no huge loss in the irrelevance that faces that group and its factchecking brethren — they weren’t going to change the political discourse anyway.

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « Romney Wants to Give His Capitalist Cronies More Money
Next Post: Good Employment News »

Reader Interactions

96Comments

  1. 1.

    The Other Bob

    January 6, 2012 at 8:36 am

    If the feds were to give you $1 a year to go out and buy retiree health insurance, would that not be an end to Medicare? According to Factcheck I guess not.

    The amount in the voucher plan and the idea that a bunch of seniors buying insurance together represent some sort of money-saving pool is a farce.

  2. 2.

    Brian R.

    January 6, 2012 at 8:40 am

    BREAKING: Unemployment down to 8.5%.

    We need to tout the good news, early and often.

  3. 3.

    ornery_curmudgeon

    January 6, 2012 at 8:42 am

    Democrats are expected to play the role of the adults in the room.

    But we are told that it is the Republicans that are the serious adult Daddy Party. Daddy has the money too … or rather the money belongs to Daddy even if he lets us have some. And Daddy keeps us safe.

    Really I think it’s more that the Democratic Party is cast to play Mommie, and so are ‘expected’ to be quiet and polite like Mommie … but as for Republican conservatives, well, boys will be boys, amirite?

  4. 4.

    SW

    January 6, 2012 at 8:43 am

    There is no loss here. There is absolutely no point in outsourcing your bullshit detector to some group of pompous ass-holes who set themselves up as the gatekeepers of what a civil discourse is supposed to look like. They are just another group of bloggers with a specific set of sponsors.

  5. 5.

    MattF

    January 6, 2012 at 8:44 am

    This is a good idea:

    http://romneytheliar.blogspot.com/

    I would also suggest that the auto-correct function in word processors be fixed so that any clause “… but he’s lying” that refers to Romney be automatically changed to “… and he’s lying.”

  6. 6.

    Raven

    January 6, 2012 at 8:44 am

    @Brian R.: So, will the pukes say it doesn’t mean shit, take credit or both?

  7. 7.

    Brian R.

    January 6, 2012 at 8:47 am

    @Raven:

    @Brian R.: So, will the pukes say it doesn’t mean shit, take credit or both?

    Joe Scarborough just said this wasn’t due to the president, it was due to the resiliency of the American worker.

    Because if the number had ticked up to 9.5% or 10%, you know he would’ve launched into a tirade about how American workers are all lazy shits.

  8. 8.

    Raven

    January 6, 2012 at 8:49 am

    @Brian R.: Did Mika’s toes curl?

  9. 9.

    Samara Morgan

    January 6, 2012 at 8:49 am

    pot kettle.
    you frontpagers try to shape the political discussion too.
    there is no difference.
    How many times have you heard a newscritter say Obama is trying to win re-election with higher unemployment than any other president has ever won re-election with?
    do you ever hear that the the percent of minorities in the electorate is also higher than ever? and that minorities are going to vote Obama?
    Were you paying attention when i tried to explain to Kay that Romney CANT WIN COLORADO because (in-part) of local anti-mormon sentiment? she threatened to ban me.
    Or when i tried to explain to Suzanne and the BJ Taste Police that Christie can’t be president because he is TOO FAT?
    there isnt a nanowafer of difference between you and the horserace media.

  10. 10.

    deep

    January 6, 2012 at 8:49 am

    So I had a GOP friend recently change his mind about Newt. He had announced a few weeks ago that he’d vote Newt, but then recently posted on his FB page that Newt calling Romney a liar was “too far” and now he’ll vote for Romney.

    O rly?

  11. 11.

    El Cid

    January 6, 2012 at 8:51 am

    You know, given the wild radicalism of our billion dollar media, we can never have too few organizations and individuals dedicated to patrolling the national discourse for adherence to establishment-accepted norms of legitimacy. Can’t be too careful. Literally, they can’t.

  12. 12.

    Raven

    January 6, 2012 at 8:51 am

    @Samara Morgan: “Shape the political”?

  13. 13.

    hildebrand

    January 6, 2012 at 8:52 am

    @Raven: First off, they will say that public sector jobs aren’t really jobs, so they are off the list. Second, they will cavil that there would have been even stronger job growth had there not been ‘uncertainty’. Third, they will complain that the jobs aren’t coming back fast enough because Obama plans on raising taxes on ‘wealth creators’. Fourth, those were all seasonal jobs and will therefore disappear. Fifth, shut up.

    Sixth, it all doesn’t matter because Obama is going to gut the military and we will soon be overrun by Mexican-narco-terrorist-commie-sympathizers who will help him install the UN as the governing authority who will promptly take away all of your guns and force the 1% to share all of their wealth with young bucks or face death panels.

  14. 14.

    Samara Morgan

    January 6, 2012 at 8:53 am

    @SW: BJ is also a gatekeeper of “civil discourse.”
    its just not in service of the horserace.

    that is what the whole GG/ABL/Cole war was about.

  15. 15.

    Raven

    January 6, 2012 at 8:53 am

    @hildebrand: Wow, I learned a new word! cavil

  16. 16.

    Samara Morgan

    January 6, 2012 at 8:56 am

    @Raven: fixt.

  17. 17.

    Brian R.

    January 6, 2012 at 8:56 am

    @hildebrand:

    They’ll try all that, but the sticking factor here is that new private-sector manufacturing jobs — which were predicted to be in the 6,000 range — were actually over 200,000 this month.

    They’ll claim it was the Job Creator Fairy that did it, but fuck ’em.

  18. 18.

    Raven

    January 6, 2012 at 8:58 am

    @Samara Morgan: Aha, I thought you were a Yarbirds fan!

  19. 19.

    El Cid

    January 6, 2012 at 8:58 am

    @hildebrand: And remember, the way to really know that Obama’s gonna getcher guns is that he keeps cleverly and deviously doing nothing to getcher guns.

    Well, except for those blatantly unfair operations by the Feds (including even the scandal-plagued one) to stop patriotic American gun sellers from vending hundreds of assault weapons per store to individuals clearly reselling them to Mexican narco-paramilitary gangs.

  20. 20.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    January 6, 2012 at 9:02 am

    @Samara Morgan: BJ is a blog. About the only thing it’s touted is that it’s run by a cat. FactCheck tries to pass itself off as an authority on what’s true and what is false, but, unlike science, they have no system for fixing or correcting their mistakes.

  21. 21.

    Samara Morgan

    January 6, 2012 at 9:04 am

    @Raven: sheesh, i keep telling you peeps that ima Quellist.

    the personal is the political
    — Quellcrist Falconer, Things I Should Have Learned by Now

  22. 22.

    El Cid

    January 6, 2012 at 9:05 am

    Fledgling right wing beloved super-scandal? Peter King investigates a hot tip from investigative gossip Maureen Dowd.

    WASHINGTON — Did the Obama administration release classified information to Hollywood notables for a film about the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, [a] Sony Pictures movie slated for release in the heat of this fall’s election campaign?
    __
    That’s a question Rep. Peter T. King, R-N.Y., wants answered. And in response, the Pentagon’s inspector general has launched an investigation, King disclosed Thursday.
    __
    “We plan to begin subject investigation immediately,” Patricia A. Brannin, deputy inspector general for intelligence and special program assessments, wrote in a memo that King emailed to reporters.
    __
    At issue is whether the filmmakers – director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, who both won Oscars for their 2009 Iraq war movie “The Hurt Locker” – were given access to classified information about a mission that remains shrouded in secrecy. While newspapers and magazines have published detailed accounts about the raid, much remains unknown to all but a few.
    __
    The film is scheduled to arrive in theaters in October, amid President Obama’s re-election battle. The bin Laden raid is widely viewed as a political plus for Obama, who sent U.S. Navy SEALs to kill the Qaida leader at a compound in Pakistan even though the CIA could not say with certainty he was there.
    __
    King’s interest was aroused in August when New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that “the movie-makers are getting top-level access to the most classified mission in history from an administration that has tried to throw more people in jail for leaking classified information than the Bush administration.”
    __
    Boal, Dowd wrote, “got welcomed to the upper echelons of the White House and the Pentagon and showed up recently — to the surprise of some military officers — at a CIA ceremony celebrating the hero Seals.”
    __
    “The leaks that followed the successful bin Laden mission led to the arrests of Pakistanis and put in danger the mission’s heroes and their families,” King said in a statement.
    __
    “Privately, individuals in the intelligence and special operations communities expressed support for my request for a probe. I look forward to an update on the investigation and actions taken thus far.”

  23. 23.

    Samara Morgan

    January 6, 2012 at 9:08 am

    @Belafon (formerly anonevent): neither BJ or the horserace media will actually discuss how race and religion are going to shape the 2012 election. so, more isomorphic than not.
    there are many points of congruency between BJ and the media.
    Sure their goals are nominally different, but their attempts to shape the political discourse with “civility” are the same.

  24. 24.

    Raven

    January 6, 2012 at 9:09 am

    @Samara Morgan: you can be such a cassandra

  25. 25.

    Samara Morgan

    January 6, 2012 at 9:14 am

    @El Cid: n/e one with two brain cells to rub together understands that Spy Chief Pasha sold OBL’s geo-loc to Panetta in return for dialling back the droning long enough for Zardari to get re-elected.
    Not that that will help him next time.
    Imran Khan is gunna get Zardaris spot.
    Remember him?

  26. 26.

    Samara Morgan

    January 6, 2012 at 9:22 am

    Imran Khan doesnt much care for Amerikkka.
    He led the Arab Spring style sit-in protests that shut down the NATO supply routes last year, and he is suing America in the International Courts over the droning of Pakistani civilians.

  27. 27.

    chopper

    January 6, 2012 at 9:24 am

    But the ad’s outrageous imagery buttresses a larger point the fact-checkers want to make: the “end Medicare” line was a bit of Democratic demagoguery designed to scare seniors, which has no place in responsible political debate.

    being a democrat is like watching your favorite team get reamed over and over again by the refs. the other team gets away with murder and you get every penalty in the book and even ones the guys just make up out of nowhere. tweet…high fiving a teammate, 10 yards.

    meanwhile the other team finally gets one just to make it ‘look fair’, and they piss and moan and the refs take it back and offer an official apology.

  28. 28.

    Carbon Dated

    January 6, 2012 at 9:26 am

    I think most of us have decided to stop paying close attention to Polifact after the Medicare incident, and I don’t consider that much of a loss. The right was only going to pay attention to factcheckers insofar as they could cherry-pick the pinocchios or pants-on-fires to stick it to the left.

    I understand your broader point, but this graph reads like this:
    1. The left stopped paying attention when it didn’t like the results.
    2. The right cherry picks.

    Shorter mistermix: both sides do it.

  29. 29.

    SW

    January 6, 2012 at 9:33 am

    @Samara Morgan: When you have a blog, the comment section is like your basement. You can do whatever the fuck you want with it. You can let it grow over with weeds. You can moderate the hell out of it or you can turn the damn thing off. It is yours. When you are a fucking blogger and you make it your mission to exercise that function for the entire political discourse, well, can you say hubris?

  30. 30.

    prufrock

    January 6, 2012 at 9:36 am

    @Carbon Dated:

    1. The left stopped paying attention when it didn’t like the results.

    You read the graph wrong. The full statement was, “The left stopped paying attention when it realized the results were bullshit.”

  31. 31.

    xian

    January 6, 2012 at 9:39 am

    i just skim past the manic one’s comments these days… reading phonetic spelling all the time is hurting my brain.

  32. 32.

    chopper

    January 6, 2012 at 9:42 am

    @prufrock:

    really it’s ‘the methodology was bullshit’ but yeah.

  33. 33.

    RalfW

    January 6, 2012 at 9:45 am

    …Democratic demagoguery designed to scare seniors, which has no place in responsible political debate.

    As you say, mister, Republican demagoguery designed to scare older white voters is the definition of responsible political debate as currently practiced and then stenographed by the very newspapers that support FactCheck.

  34. 34.

    Samara Morgan

    January 6, 2012 at 9:52 am

    @SW: oh, idc. im just pointing out that Cole’s whole defense of Greenwald’s rape screed was an attempt to police the “discourse” into “civility”.
    @xian: its not phonetic spelling. its an attempt to weaponize the Snowcrash virus for comboxes.

  35. 35.

    Cacti

    January 6, 2012 at 10:03 am

    My suspicion of the fact-checker orgs has always been of the “who watches the watchmen?” variety.

    Everyone has their own agenda.

  36. 36.

    geg6

    January 6, 2012 at 10:04 am

    @ornery_curmudgeon:

    Really I think it’s more that the Democratic Party is cast to play Mommie, and so are ‘expected’ to be quiet and polite like Mommie

    Spot the fuck on.

  37. 37.

    Raven

    January 6, 2012 at 10:06 am

    @geg6: How’d the meetings go?

  38. 38.

    Raven

    January 6, 2012 at 10:09 am

    @Samara Morgan: “Also, both in the Metaverse and in Reality, they confront one of Rife’s minions, an Aleut harpoon master named Raven whose motorcycle’s sidecar packs a nuke wired to go off should Raven ever be killed.”

  39. 39.

    geg6

    January 6, 2012 at 10:13 am

    @Raven:

    Of course, not a single one has their aid in order. Several didn’t think a Social Security number or Selective Service registration was really all that important. Another had not yet applied for his Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits and didn’t understand my anguish at that. Another has applied for and been approved for almost $14,000 in private loans; meanwhile, his federal aid has not yet been received here.

    I fucking hate mid-year new enrollments. There’s a reason they couldn’t get it together enough to be here in the fall and they prove it every year.

  40. 40.

    Samara Morgan

    January 6, 2012 at 10:15 am

    @Raven: hahahaha!
    you are, actually, the only juicer im slightly afraid of.
    /Y.T.

  41. 41.

    chopper

    January 6, 2012 at 10:17 am

    @Raven:

    man, i wish you could use sumerian to control people’s minds. my dad would have ruled the world.

  42. 42.

    Raven

    January 6, 2012 at 10:27 am

    @geg6: UGH! I’m working on a Military/Vets faculty training effort myself.

  43. 43.

    Raven

    January 6, 2012 at 10:31 am

    @Samara Morgan: I am totally harmless as long as you leave my dogs alone.

  44. 44.

    Samara Morgan

    January 6, 2012 at 10:37 am

    @chopper: you are too literal.
    sumerian is just a metaphor for a lot of things that can be used to hack human brainstems.

  45. 45.

    Paul in KY

    January 6, 2012 at 10:40 am

    @Raven: Thanks for posting that. One of their great songs.

  46. 46.

    Mnemosyne

    January 6, 2012 at 10:41 am

    @RalfW:

    As you say, mister, Republican demagoguery designed to scare older white voters is the definition of responsible political debate as currently practiced and then stenographed by the very newspapers that support FactCheck.

    The fact that the Republicans won a historic victory in 2010 primarily by flipping older voters to R thanks to a series of under-the-radar commercials run by Crossroads USA telling seniors that Obama was killing Medicare made PolitiFact’s choice even more brazenly biased. Apparently Republicans are allowed to scream that Democrats are killing Medicare when they make it more available to more people, but Democrats aren’t allowed to point out that Republicans want to kill Medicare even when Republicans freely admit they want to kill Medicare.

  47. 47.

    chopper

    January 6, 2012 at 10:50 am

    @Samara Morgan:

    you do realize that neurolinguistic programming is a crock of shit, right?

  48. 48.

    Samara Morgan

    January 6, 2012 at 10:52 am

    @chopper: lol it isnt.
    consider arabic. its a gateway drug for islam.
    every western scholar that has attempted to translate the Quran has become a muslim, Pickthall to Sells.

  49. 49.

    Bill in Section 147

    January 6, 2012 at 10:56 am

    @Raven: Me too. Always a good thing.

  50. 50.

    Howlin Wolfe

    January 6, 2012 at 10:59 am

    @Brian R.: I agree, Brian. Too much attention is paid to the clown car. It’s necessary to monitor the crazies, but we need to figure out how to advocate for what we want, at least as much as guarding against what we don’t.
    Early and often, we should be talking about (in no particular order) getting money out of politics by reversing, by whatever means works, the influence of corporate money on politics, restoring the social safety net, establishing a fair system for paying for health care, establishing reasonable, functional regulation of the environment and finances, and reversing the inroads made by the last 2 administrations into our civil liberties, and stopping the erosion of reproductive rights, particularly those of women. I’m leaving out some important issues because I can’t think of them at the moment, but that’s at least some of those issues.

  51. 51.

    The Bobs

    January 6, 2012 at 11:05 am

    What a pile of drivel. I can’t believe you even posted this. Greg Marx is an idiot.

  52. 52.

    Villago Delenda Est

    January 6, 2012 at 11:05 am

    @Samara Morgan:

    every western scholar that has attempted to translate the Quran has become a muslim

    You can assert this shit, but it only further cements your rep around here as a flake who is prime pie filter bait.

  53. 53.

    chopper

    January 6, 2012 at 11:06 am

    @Samara Morgan:

    that’s hilarious. guess my dad secretly turned muslim back when he was translating shit at the oriental institute. he never turned sumerian tho. or maybe the old statue of nebuchadnezzar we had in the basement was part of a secret religious shrine, i dunno. anything’s possible.

  54. 54.

    The Bobs

    January 6, 2012 at 11:07 am

    Factcheck.org’s lie of the year should have be self-awarded.

  55. 55.

    chopper

    January 6, 2012 at 11:11 am

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    now i’m worried about all my israeli friends who know arabic.

  56. 56.

    catclub

    January 6, 2012 at 11:12 am

    @deep: I think that one line by Newt (that Romney is a liar) was a head fake that thrilled a lot of people like us and will never be seen again. It really was too good to be true. And like they tell you when dealing with a scam, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And we do know that Newt is a scam.

  57. 57.

    dww44

    January 6, 2012 at 11:29 am

    @chopper:

    being a democrat is like watching your favorite team get reamed over and over again by the refs. the other team gets away with murder and you get every penalty in the book and even ones the guys just make up out of nowhere. tweet…high fiving a teammate, 10 yards.

    Everywhere on my teevee, this is a constant. Just saw it on CNBC who gives 1 minute to Hilda Solis on the jobs report and then 5 minutes LIVE from Tenn. to Sen. Bob Corker, who, of course, says the President can take no credit for this. At least he purports to be gladdened by the news, so he’s not completely heartless. Gutless, yes. The CNBC pundits challenge him NOT ONE WHIT. Such is the state of the MSM

  58. 58.

    fasteddie9318

    January 6, 2012 at 11:36 am

    @Samara Morgan:

    every western scholar that has attempted to translate the Quran has become a muslim, Pickthall to Sells.

    Cleary, Bell, Arberry, Jones…but you were saying?

  59. 59.

    chopper

    January 6, 2012 at 11:36 am

    @fasteddie9318:

    i didn’t know thomas jefferson became a muslim.

  60. 60.

    Kathy in St. Louis

    January 6, 2012 at 11:37 am

    Did Poltifact or Factcheck say anything about the Huckabee ad for the Health Care industry that claims that health care reform, which, of course, is referred to as Obamacare, was ” passed in a locked room, in the middle of the night, and shoved down Americans’ throats”? Just wondering,because I recall weeks of heated discussions, several daytime votes, and the conservatives lost. Lying, blatantly, about the process by which HCR was passed and having networks run it, is pretty despicable. Was that one mentioned by Factcheck?

  61. 61.

    wrb

    January 6, 2012 at 11:39 am

    @Samara Morgan:

    You fail to realize that America is poised for one of of its periodic reversals of preferred body image.

    The fatties will throw off their emaciated, sunken-eyed twitchy oppressors
    and heave themselves to their feet lumber forth to reclaim the the right to dripping triple-beast burgers with ham bacon and cheese with fries and a shake right under Michelle’s disapproving glare.

    One of the wan, once-popular ones, now a match girl, might be thrown a coin if a fatty wants a smoke.

  62. 62.

    fasteddie9318

    January 6, 2012 at 11:43 am

    @chopper: Jefferson didn’t translate it himself, I don’t think. Keith Ellison used Jefferson’s copy of George Sale’s first English translation of the Quran for his oath of office. Sale, on the other hand, would be surprised to find out that he actually converted to Islam.

  63. 63.

    chopper

    January 6, 2012 at 11:46 am

    @Kathy in St. Louis:

    that’s silly. that ad would likely get a ‘mostly true’. because technically, the house and senate doors do feature a lock.

  64. 64.

    chopper

    January 6, 2012 at 11:48 am

    @fasteddie9318:

    he did teach himself a modest amount of arabic, i would assume he cracked open the real thing once or twice.

    but yes, i’m sure Sale would be very interested to know his brain had been hacked by arabic.

  65. 65.

    Kathy in St. Louis

    January 6, 2012 at 11:57 am

    @chopper: I’m just always perplexed that all moral outrage by groups like this is directed toward the left. Is it because more is expected of us, or that we just don’t pay as well as the right and the groups are bought and paid for?

  66. 66.

    chopper

    January 6, 2012 at 12:07 pm

    @Kathy in St. Louis:

    mostly it’s because the left has allowed the right to frame the issue for decades when it came to any actual or perceived media bias. it’s like wondering how ‘liberal’ came to be such a pejorative term in this country. well, because we sat back and did nothing to stop it.

  67. 67.

    WaterGirl

    January 6, 2012 at 12:08 pm

    @Raven: What? Your bride gets no love? :-)

  68. 68.

    lovable liberal

    January 6, 2012 at 12:18 pm

    Civility in the face of bullshit is simply wrong.

    If “end Medicare” is a lie because it’s totally alien from the undeniable fact that Republicans want to end Medicare as we know it, then what’s the GOP refrain “job-killing”, which also needs a disclaimer, though a huge one – job-killing if you assume a bizarre and well-falsified economic theory that doing everything for the wealthy fixes everything.

  69. 69.

    different-church-lady

    January 6, 2012 at 12:48 pm

    I’ll repeat what I said when the whole dustup began: if you’re really only interested in separating truth from lies, then you wouldn’t get in the business of ranking one lie over another at the end of the year. Doing so just means you’re playing the same game you claim you’re trying to get away from, because the idea that one lie is bigger than another is… (wait for it…) subjective.

  70. 70.

    Under the Aurora Freeway

    January 6, 2012 at 1:09 pm

    @The Bobs: I recognize my own!

  71. 71.

    dmbeaster

    January 6, 2012 at 2:03 pm

    I guess the real point about these fact-checking poobahs is that they are frustrated media types trying to reclaim legitimacy for their position and opinions (dressed up as “non-biased fact checking”). Which is why they purport to have no opinions – same old same old from media hacks.

  72. 72.

    Frankensteinbeck

    January 6, 2012 at 3:05 pm

    @lovable liberal:
    Apparently ‘job-killing’ is correct. That is Politifact’s judgment. You see, in the range of 30-40k jobs were lost in the bureaucratic reshuffling. Ergo, the ACA is job-killing.

    Yes, that bit of weaseling ignore-the-context literalness is their official ruling.

  73. 73.

    Samara Morgan

    January 6, 2012 at 5:00 pm

    @fasteddie9318: hmmm.
    i guess i should have stipulated all translations of the Quran that are recognized as valid….like Pickthall, Asad, and Sells. No one cites Sales. Because he didnt really translate the Miraculous Quran.
    He anglicized it.

  74. 74.

    chopper

    January 6, 2012 at 5:04 pm

    @Samara Morgan:

    ‘recognized as valid’ of course means ‘the scholar converted’. it’s so simple!

  75. 75.

    Samara Morgan

    January 6, 2012 at 5:07 pm

    @chopper: that is the point.
    Sales brain wasn’t hacked.
    He didnt translate the Quran, he anglicized it.
    its like the difference in the translations of the Arabian Nights.
    Husain Haddawy translated it, Richard Burton anglicized it.

    another good book is my beloved Cavalli-Sforza. Genes, Peoples and Languages
    do you not believe chanting and meditation can change brain morphology?
    i can give some cites on that too if you like.
    ;)

  76. 76.

    Samara Morgan

    January 6, 2012 at 5:09 pm

    @chopper: no, it means an accurate translation.
    i have never heard of Sales. is his translation anglicization even in print still?
    and even if it only worked on Sells, Asad and Pickthall, its still an EXAMPLE.
    why do people here get so pissy when ever i talk about Islam?
    chanting and meditation are also examples of brain-hacking.
    In Snowcrash Stephenson says both Jesus and Muhammed were neurolinguistic hackers.

  77. 77.

    Samara Morgan

    January 6, 2012 at 5:15 pm

    @chopper: btw…..it worked on me.
    i reverted after i started studying arabic. i have quranic recitation on my ipod.
    :)

  78. 78.

    Samara Morgan

    January 6, 2012 at 5:18 pm

    @wrb: am i the little match girl? that story has a sad ending if i recall.
    :(

  79. 79.

    Samara Morgan

    January 6, 2012 at 5:26 pm

    @chopper: why would i think Sale was a “scholar” when i have never heard of him?
    dont “scholars” get their publications…..umm…..read?

  80. 80.

    wrb

    January 6, 2012 at 5:39 pm

    @Samara Morgan:

    No, just a type. England used to be full of starving match girls.

    If you were a homeless kid and could buy or get advanced a bunch of matches you could sell them one-by-one to well-stuffed gennelmen wanting a light and mabe earn enough for a bite to eat. They are in many stories. Seems they were enough that gennelmen didn’t need to carry matches.

  81. 81.

    Samara Morgan

    January 6, 2012 at 5:47 pm

    @fasteddie9318: hmm…..i should have said every western scholar that SUCCESSFULLY translated the Quran had his brain hacked. i have never heard of any of those guys.
    mebbe terry jones has a translation too…..but i hardly think hes a scholar.
    ;)

    Islam just makes you guys go nutz.
    I had to hack my own brain to unnerstand q-physics.
    but that wasnt based on linguistics.

  82. 82.

    Baron Jrod of Keeblershire

    January 6, 2012 at 6:09 pm

    @Samara Morgan: Is it possible to be more self-absorbed than you?

    “I didn’t hear of those guys, so obviously they’re not scholars! It’s impossible for a scholar to exist that the great matoko never heard of!”

  83. 83.

    slightly_peeved

    January 6, 2012 at 6:18 pm

    Ignore matoko, she’s just a poor sline who could never make it in the Decenarian math, and thinks that if she throws out enough bullshytt people will start thinking she’s a Saunt.

  84. 84.

    chopper

    January 6, 2012 at 6:54 pm

    @Samara Morgan:

    you never heard of arberry? his translation was widely renowned. just because you haven’t heard of the guy doesn’t demonstrate anything more than your ignorance.

    your argument basically comes down to a simple tautology frosted in a thick layer of pseudoscientific garbage you gleaned from a sci-fi novel.

  85. 85.

    chopper

    January 6, 2012 at 6:56 pm

    @Samara Morgan:

    In Snowcrash Stephenson says both Jesus and Muhammed were neurolinguistic hackers

    you realize that’s a work of fiction, right?

  86. 86.

    chopper

    January 6, 2012 at 7:13 pm

    @Samara Morgan:

    LOL, i’m sure all it took for you to figure out how to grind out the lagrangian of a dirac field was just ‘hacking your brain’. math, shmath.

  87. 87.

    chopper

    January 6, 2012 at 7:39 pm

    @Samara Morgan:

    Asad became a convert when he tried to translate the koran and the ‘arabic nam-shub’ rooted into his brain? cause he converted at 26 and translated the koran way later, publishing it when he was 80. sounds like horseshit to me.

  88. 88.

    chopper

    January 6, 2012 at 7:44 pm

    also, sells is a convert?

  89. 89.

    Samara Morgan

    January 6, 2012 at 8:24 pm

    @chopper: revert, plz.
    ;)
    and i said, arabic was the nam-shub, not the Quran.
    and ive never heard of Arberry.
    you are welcome to furnish citations of his work.

    @slightly_peeved:at least you have read the book. but im more aligned with Saunt Bly, trying to educate cudlips slines that only desire to eat my liver.
    ;)

  90. 90.

    Samara Morgan

    January 6, 2012 at 8:32 pm

    Islam makes a large portion of the juicitariat just wild with rage…..i wunner why?
    I just used arabic and reversion as an example of a neurolinguistic hack.

    “Wait a minute, Juanita. Make up your mind. This Snow Crash thing—is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?”
    __
    Juanita shrugs. “What’s the difference?”
    ― Neal Stephenson

  91. 91.

    MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson

    January 6, 2012 at 8:40 pm

    @Samara Morgan:

    A.J.Arberry was one of the first major translators of classic Arabic texts into English. He did pre-Islamic poetry and the Quran.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_John_Arberry

  92. 92.

    Samara Morgan

    January 7, 2012 at 6:32 am

    @MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson: never heard of him.
    i wager that his translation of the Quran garners just as much literary respect as Richard Burton’s translation of the Arabian Nights….which is zero.

  93. 93.

    Samara Morgan

    January 7, 2012 at 7:31 am

    @MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson: look. i just used arabic and reversion as an example of a nam-shub.
    I think i can say that the western scholars that were immune to the nam-shub, anglicized the Quran instead of translating it accurately.
    Because Pickthalls and Asads and Sells translations are validated by muslims and widely read, they have more veracity…are more authentic.

    i should not have said “all” western scholars. i was wrong about that.
    happy naow?
    ;)

  94. 94.

    Samara Morgan

    January 7, 2012 at 8:53 am

    @MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson: PS
    Arberry was an ORIENTALIST.
    do you know what that means?

  95. 95.

    chopper

    January 7, 2012 at 8:59 am

    @Samara Morgan:

    sells is a convert?

  96. 96.

    chopper

    January 7, 2012 at 9:05 am

    @Samara Morgan:

    you said every westerner scholar who tried to translate the koran ended up converting. asad converted 55 years before he translated the koran.

    also, sells is a convert?

    and sorry dogg, but just because you haven’t heard of arberry is pretty meaningless. you’re not some sort of crazy authority on islamic scholarship, you’re just a convert with some wacky ideas gleaned from science fiction.

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

Political Action

Postcard Writing Information

Recent Comments

  • narya on COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: September 27, 2023 (Sep 27, 2023 @ 8:52am)
  • Burrowing Owl on COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: September 27, 2023 (Sep 27, 2023 @ 8:51am)
  • Matt McIrvin on COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: September 27, 2023 (Sep 27, 2023 @ 8:46am)
  • Jinchi on Late Night Open Thread: Rude Mechanicals (Sep 27, 2023 @ 8:45am)
  • Soprano2 on COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: September 27, 2023 (Sep 27, 2023 @ 8:44am)

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
We All Need A Little Kindness
What Has Biden Done for You Lately?

Balloon Juice Meetups!

All Meetups
Talk of Meetups – Meetup Planning

Fundraising 2023-24

Wis*Dems Supreme Court + SD-8

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Mailing List Signup
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)

Twitter / Spoutible

Balloon Juice (Spoutible)
WaterGirl (Spoutible)
TaMara (Spoutible)
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
TaMara
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
ActualCitizensUnited

Join the Fight!

Join the Fight Signup Form
All Join the Fight Posts

Balloon Juice for Ukraine

Donate

Cole & Friends Learn Español

Introductory Post
Cole & Friends Learn Español

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2023 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!