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.
The Other Bob
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.
Brian R.
BREAKING: Unemployment down to 8.5%.
We need to tout the good news, early and often.
ornery_curmudgeon
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?
SW
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.
MattF
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.”
Raven
@Brian R.: So, will the pukes say it doesn’t mean shit, take credit or both?
Brian R.
@Raven:
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.
Raven
@Brian R.: Did Mika’s toes curl?
Samara Morgan
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.
deep
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?
El Cid
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.
Raven
@Samara Morgan: “Shape the political”?
hildebrand
@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.
Samara Morgan
@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.
Raven
@hildebrand: Wow, I learned a new word! cavil
Samara Morgan
@Raven: fixt.
Brian R.
@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.
Raven
@Samara Morgan: Aha, I thought you were a Yarbirds fan!
El Cid
@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.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@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.
Samara Morgan
@Raven: sheesh, i keep telling you peeps that ima Quellist.
El Cid
Fledgling right wing beloved super-scandal? Peter King investigates a hot tip from investigative gossip Maureen Dowd.
Samara Morgan
@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.
Raven
@Samara Morgan: you can be such a cassandra
Samara Morgan
@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?
Samara Morgan
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.
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.
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.
Carbon Dated
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.
SW
@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?
prufrock
@Carbon Dated:
You read the graph wrong. The full statement was, “The left stopped paying attention when it realized the results were bullshit.”
xian
i just skim past the manic one’s comments these days… reading phonetic spelling all the time is hurting my brain.
chopper
@prufrock:
really it’s ‘the methodology was bullshit’ but yeah.
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.
Samara Morgan
@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.
Cacti
My suspicion of the fact-checker orgs has always been of the “who watches the watchmen?” variety.
Everyone has their own agenda.
geg6
@ornery_curmudgeon:
Spot the fuck on.
Raven
@geg6: How’d the meetings go?
Raven
@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.”
geg6
@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.
Samara Morgan
@Raven: hahahaha!
you are, actually, the only juicer im slightly afraid of.
/Y.T.
chopper
@Raven:
man, i wish you could use sumerian to control people’s minds. my dad would have ruled the world.
Raven
@geg6: UGH! I’m working on a Military/Vets faculty training effort myself.
Raven
@Samara Morgan: I am totally harmless as long as you leave my dogs alone.
Samara Morgan
@chopper: you are too literal.
sumerian is just a metaphor for a lot of things that can be used to hack human brainstems.
Paul in KY
@Raven: Thanks for posting that. One of their great songs.
Mnemosyne
@RalfW:
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.
chopper
@Samara Morgan:
you do realize that neurolinguistic programming is a crock of shit, right?
Samara Morgan
@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.
Bill in Section 147
@Raven: Me too. Always a good thing.
Howlin Wolfe
@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.
The Bobs
What a pile of drivel. I can’t believe you even posted this. Greg Marx is an idiot.
Villago Delenda Est
@Samara Morgan:
You can assert this shit, but it only further cements your rep around here as a flake who is prime pie filter bait.
chopper
@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.
The Bobs
Factcheck.org’s lie of the year should have be self-awarded.
chopper
@Villago Delenda Est:
now i’m worried about all my israeli friends who know arabic.
catclub
@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.
dww44
@chopper:
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
fasteddie9318
@Samara Morgan:
Cleary, Bell, Arberry, Jones…but you were saying?
chopper
@fasteddie9318:
i didn’t know thomas jefferson became a muslim.
Kathy in St. Louis
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?
wrb
@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.
fasteddie9318
@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.
chopper
@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.
chopper
@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.
Kathy in St. Louis
@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?
chopper
@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.
WaterGirl
@Raven: What? Your bride gets no love? :-)
lovable liberal
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.
different-church-lady
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.
Under the Aurora Freeway
@The Bobs: I recognize my own!
dmbeaster
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.
Frankensteinbeck
@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.
Samara Morgan
@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.
chopper
@Samara Morgan:
‘recognized as valid’ of course means ‘the scholar converted’. it’s so simple!
Samara Morgan
@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.
;)
Samara Morgan
@chopper: no, it means an accurate translation.
i have never heard of Sales. is his
translationanglicization 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.
Samara Morgan
@chopper: btw…..it worked on me.
i reverted after i started studying arabic. i have quranic recitation on my ipod.
:)
Samara Morgan
@wrb: am i the little match girl? that story has a sad ending if i recall.
:(
Samara Morgan
@chopper: why would i think Sale was a “scholar” when i have never heard of him?
dont “scholars” get their publications…..umm…..read?
wrb
@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.
Samara Morgan
@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.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@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!”
slightly_peeved
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.
chopper
@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.
chopper
@Samara Morgan:
you realize that’s a work of fiction, right?
chopper
@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.
chopper
@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.
chopper
also, sells is a convert?
Samara Morgan
@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
cudlipsslines that only desire to eat my liver.;)
Samara Morgan
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.
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
@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
Samara Morgan
@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.
Samara Morgan
@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?
;)
Samara Morgan
@MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson: PS
Arberry was an ORIENTALIST.
do you know what that means?
chopper
@Samara Morgan:
sells is a convert?
chopper
@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.