The Gawd-Awful Video That Enraged The Gawd-Awful Islamists

[caroljane]

OK Robert, my diametricism was way off.

As was yours back on the net rumour/real news discussion. Remember? The MSM did not report the unsubstantiated report that Stevens was raped. They did report the unsubstantiated rumour that McCain cheated on his second wife.

Carol,

The McCain rumor was one of a myriad of possible examples.

For a few of the many many others: during this election season, the Washington Post's political "fact checker" may be be spotted awarding Pinocchios (on a scale of 1 to 4) to politicians who have made statements that are completely and obviously true. No bonus points for guessing the party affiliation of the politicians so treated.

But, OK, let's go further into the McCain rumor. As I understand it, the story was so thin that the New York Times was walking a fine line between reporting a rumor that originated with someone else—and originating the rumor itself. And this is the same New York Times that had been in no hurry to say one word about John Edwards and Rielle Hunter, with the consequence that the Gray Lady (and her competitors) got scooped by the National Enquirer.

The best and fairest journalists in the world will sometimes fail to distinguish a real story from a rumor. That's life.

What I'm worried about is what happens when journalists develop the habit of filtering story from rumor on the basis of what they want to believe—or on the basis of what they believe will enhance their guy's political prospects and hurt the other guy's.

I doubt that most mass media outlets in the United States used what facts they had to go on, and which sources they most trusted, to decide whether to say anything about Ambassador Stevens being raped. They decided not to say anything about it because, if true, it would make their guy, Barack Obama, look bad. They hoped it wasn't true, and in this case they were right.

I doubt that Front Page Mag (David Horowitz's operation) based its decision primarily on facts and sources either. They wanted to run something that would make the other guy, Barack Obama, look bad. They hoped it was true, and they were wrong.

I don't believe that the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky affair constituted grounds for impeachment, even though Bill had lied under oath, he was being questioned under the provisions of a sexual harassment law that he had lent his political support to, and he ended up being disbarred for lying under oath.

Besides, if Ken Starr hadn't been put on the case, I would never have learned about Bill's hitherto unsuspected resemblance to General Jack D. Ripper. And that's a genuine instance of Too Much Information.

Robert Campbell

I agree with everything you say here. Except, I looked at Horowitz's Front Page site, and however biased the MSM is, to eqauate him as a "journalist" in any way with the majority of reporters and editors who work for the major papers and networks, is really unfair to them.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

And in the middle where I live, I cannot see the world as divided into two groups...

Carol,

I wish your posts reflected this, then.

It's a questions of adjectives and statistics and frames.

If you constantly blast traditional villain figures according to the Progressive Narrative at a ratio of about 99 to 1 with respect to the people from the Progressive side (or who the Progressive side approves of) who are proven to lie, mislead, commit acts of violence and otherwise do dastardly things, you give off the impression that you favor the Progressive side and are not "in the middle where [you] live" at all.

Also, when called on about the constant omission, you generally come out with statements like you didn't think you had to mention certain things to this audience because they are so obvious.

You are polarized at the buzz whrrrrr bing level, but take umbrage when I mention this. But I see it all the time.

You have very harsh adjectives for the villains in the Progressive Narrative (ones who show an evangelical Christian or rich person bent, for example, but there are other characteristics and pretty clear images in the narrative), no adjectives at all for actual proven villains who preach the Progressive Narrative (or are used in the Progressive Narrative as victims) when they are caught with their pants down--the ones you think are too obvious to mention, and constant equivalencies between superficial characteristics and outright evil.

For example, you claim a film-maker has blood on his hands and not a word about the actual killers until called on it--at which time you said you didn't think it was worth mentioning to this audience.

It goes like this in your posts:

Progressive Narrative villains - Highly charged emotional outbursts, harsh adjectives and lots of posts.

Bad people who reflect poorly on the Progressive Narrative - No mention at all unless pushed to, then no adjectives or emotion when you say you do not condone them. As few posts as possible.

I'm sorry. You SAY you live in the middle. The substance of your posts, and your posting behavior, prove otherwise.

Note--I don't mind the Progressive bias. I enjoy the challenge to good arguments when they are presented. Hell, I have my own conservative small-government bias and I'm open about trying to keep it in line.

I do mind the pretension at lack of bias and the thin skin when this is mentioned.

Equating bad film-makers to murderers is not critical thinking and it is not reasonable. Equating Islamist terrorism to individual rights is not critical thinking and it is not reasonable. I could go on. I hold it is not reasonable to claim you are being reasonable when equating that stuff and I will keep on calling it what it is--unreasonable bias.

So why not just say you can't stand people who think like that film-maker and have no problem if his rights are violated? That you hold there are exceptions to rights like freedom of speech and that some people should have them and some people should not? You say it constantly anyway--right before you say that's not the case (when called on it).

Michael

[caroljane]

OK Robert, my diametricism was way off.

As was yours back on the net rumour/real news discussion. Remember? The MSM did not report the unsubstantiated report that Stevens was raped. They did report the unsubstantiated rumour that McCain cheated on his second wife.

Carol,

The McCain rumor was one of a myriad of possible examples.

For a few of the many many others: during this election season, the Washington Post's political "fact checker" may be be spotted awarding Pinocchios (on a scale of 1 to 4) to politicians who have made statements that are completely and obviously true. No bonus points for guessing the party affiliation of the politicians so treated.

But, OK, let's go further into the McCain rumor. As I understand it, the story was so thin that the New York Times was walking a fine line between reporting a rumor that originated with someone else—and originating the rumor itself. And this is the same New York Times that had been in no hurry to say one word about John Edwards and Rielle Hunter, with the consequence that the Gray Lady (and her competitors) got scooped by the National Enquirer.

The best and fairest journalists in the world will sometimes fail to distinguish a real story from a rumor. That's life.

What I'm worried about is what happens when journalists develop the habit of filtering story from rumor on the basis of what they want to believe—or on the basis of what they believe will enhance their guy's political prospects and hurt the other guy's.

I doubt that most mass media outlets in the United States used what facts they had to go on, and which sources they most trusted, to decide whether to say anything about Ambassador Stevens being raped. They decided not to say anything about it because, if true, it would make their guy, Barack Obama, look bad. They hoped it wasn't true, and in this case they were right.

I doubt that Front Page Mag (David Horowitz's operation) based its decision primarily on facts and sources either. They wanted to run something that would make the other guy, Barack Obama, look bad. They hoped it was true, and they were wrong.

I don't believe that the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky affair constituted grounds for impeachment, even though Bill had lied under oath, he was being questioned under the provisions of a sexual harassment law that he had lent his political support to, and he ended up being disbarred for lying under oath.

Besides, if Ken Starr hadn't been put on the case, I would never have learned about Bill's hitherto unsuspected resemblance to General Jack D. Ripper. And that's a genuine instance of Too Much Information.

Robert Campbell

I agree with everything you say here. Except, I looked at Horowitz's Front Page site, and however biased the MSM is, to eqauate him as a "journalist" in any way with the majority of reporters and editors who work for the major papers and networks, is really unfair to them.

PS - I also noticed that Horowitz quoted Raymond Ibrahim as a source for the sodomy story. Ibrahim was also a "source" for the crucifixion hoax.

[william.scherk]

For a few of the many many others: during this election season, the Washington Post's political "fact checker" may be be spotted awarding Pinocchios (on a scale of 1 to 4) to politicians who have made statements that are completely and obviously true. No bonus points for guessing the party affiliation of the politicians so treated.

Hey! no fair. I want bonus points. I live for bonus points.

Mr Pinocchio is the writer of the Post's Fact Checker blog, Glenn Kessler. I am going to guess who gets awarded long-nose points: members and top politicos and news generators of both parties Republicans!.

Let's check. The last ten 4-Pinocchio entries are:

• 4 Pinocchios for a truncated, 14-year-old Obama clip
  
• New anti-Romney ad: same steelworker, tougher message (revised)
  
• 4 Pinocchios for an unproven Romney claim of ‘crony capitalism’
  
• 4 Pinocchios for Romney’s claim on an Obama health care pledge
  
• Whopper: White House adviser David Plouffe on Romney’sjobs record and GOP strategy
  
• 4 Pinocchios for Obama’s newest anti-Romney ad
  
• Over-the-top attacks on Obama’s green-energy programs
  
• Four Pinocchios: small business tax cut will ‘create 100,000 jobs a year’ (Part 2 on claims about the bill)
  
• Rick Santorum’s ‘kitchen sink’ slam at Romney
  

Now, I seem to have got it wrong. Dang. No points at all for me. Robert?

But, OK, let's go further into the McCain rumor. As I understand it, the story was so thin that the New York Times was walking a fine line between reporting a rumor that originated with someone else—and originating the rumor itself.

I forgot about the McCain rumour (if it registered at the time), so had to dig it up. This is the New York Times handling the 'sodomized and murdered' beat, from For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk:

Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.

The whole report is worth reading, to absorb the sleaze, and especially the appended Correction and Note to Readers ...

nd this is the same New York Times that had been in no hurry to say one word about John Edwards and Rielle Hunter, with the consequence that the Gray Lady (and her competitors) got scooped by the National Enquirer.

Yeah, the same NYT that published a whiny mea-culpa dodge on the issue: Reticence of the Mainstream Media becomes a Story in Itself.

-- I think Progressive Railroader was pointing to the bogus sodomite murder story as an instance of malicious rumour that many were tempted to believe in (while acknowledging your balanced assessment).

Earlier in the thread, Robert, you styled it credible that Stevens was "carried through the streets, and not everyone involved was doing so with helpful intent" ... and you told us that "These things do happen in Libya" (meaning sodomizing corpses). Similarly, Adam helpfully assured me that "[f]urther South in the African continent sodomizing the enemy is a routine practice in inter tribal conflicts."

To separate fact from fiction, malicious bullshit from 'possibly' true, crap from reality, this needs collaboration, not mere retailing wholesale 'everyone knows' canards. While we on the Progressive Railroad to World Socialism tend to attract stern looks, and while we Railroaders give stern looks to the valiant strivers for a Randian Tomorrow, we can still help each other get to the facts.

Carol, your must stop withholding adjectives. Michael is asking you, as Grand Vizier of everything OL, to conform to his narrative, and to accept his narrative of your interactions here. It is perhaps the least you could do to better serve the OL community, where we strive to be on the same side of reality as best we can.

Edited September 23, 2012 by william.scherk

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

We should mention that sodomizing for humiliation in the Arab world is often done with broom handles, sticks, gun barrels and other objects like that.

This may not be the precise definition of sodomy, but it is often reported in the news that way. It was for Qaddafi, for instance.

This gives a different image than savage Arabs humping a corpse, so it doesn't fit spin narratives very well, but I believe it is closer to what actually happens.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Carol, your must stop withholding adjectives.

William,

You are telling her to stop withholding adjectives. Not me.

I am not calling for redistribution of adjectives.

I'm merely reporting what I read.

Well... I am calling for just a little more self-awareness when wagging fingers in the faces of others. But that is given as commentary, not an edict from a "Grand Vizier."

(btw - You really like the power stuff in human relations, don't you? I see you talk about it all the time...)

Michael

[caroljane]

So why not just say you can't stand people who think like that film-maker and have no problem if his rights are violated? That you hold there are exceptions to rights like freedom of speech and that some people should have them and some people should not? You say it constantly anyway--right before you say that's not the case (when called on it).

Michael

Wow, Michael. I guess I better take this a little bit at a time.

"People like the filmmaker:" I don;t know many of , but as far as I know I can stand them. This filmmaker from what I know is a tradition-bound emigrant who prospered early in the US, got caught in the recession, turned to crime to feed his family, and got in deeper, and is now as I said days ago, hung out to dry by his bosses.I don't really know what he is like, but I can certainly stand him and I do not wish harm to come to him. If you want adjectives, he is a hapless schlub.

[caroljane]

Also, I do not hold that there are exceptions to the rights to freedom of speech, and I have never said so once much less constantly. There must be an absolute right to freedom of speech, because suppression of that freedom is worse than allowing it,

[william.scherk]

Progressive Railroader asked of Worried-about-Rumours why the President of Egypt ought be involved in the rantings and threats of a two-bit mullah?

In reply we learned of a 'two-bit mullah' who thinks that Jews cannot be relieved of their moral corruption unless their hearts are cut out, the Director of Islamic Education at Al-Azhar, and now we learn the name: Isma'il 'Ali Muhammad, from Al-Azhar.

Noted that any whackjob with an internet account can issue a fatwa (religious decision), and that Tom Friedman quoted Ali Muhammad as part of his editorial: Yes, anti-Muslim video was awful, but radical Muslims say awful things, too

According to Friedman, there are two things that need to made clear: "One is that an insult — even one as stupid and ugly as the anti-Islam video on YouTube that started all of this — does not entitle people to go out and attack embassies and kill innocent diplomats."

Friedman suggests that those like a demonstrator in Cairo he quoted need to look in the mirror, or turn on the TV and listen to what is said about Jesus, Jews, blah blah.

They might want to look at the chauvinistic bile that is pumped out by some of their own media — on satellite television stations and websites or sold in sidewalk bookstores outside of mosques — insulting Shiites, Jews, Christians, Sufis and anyone else who is not a Sunni, or fundamentalist, Muslim. There are people in their countries for whom hating "the other" has become a source of identity and a collective excuse for failing to realize their own potential.

Great point to make. One made by many among Egyptian/Arab intelligentsia (Mona Eltahawy foremost).

Friedman introduces the MEMRI project, and notes the eruption of stupid from Ali Mohammad:

I asked MEMRI for a sampler of the hate-filled videos that appear regularly on Arab/Muslim mass media. Here are some:

[ . . . ]

Dr. Ismail Ali Muhammad, a senior Al-Azhar scholar: The Jews, "a source of evil and harm in all human societies." Feb. 14, 2012.

As a Jew who has lived and worked in the Muslim world, I know that these expressions of intolerance are only one side of the story, and that there are deeply tolerant views and strains of Islam espoused and practiced there as well. Theirs are complex societies.

That's the point. America is a complex society, too. But let's cut the nonsense that this is just our problem and the only issue is how we clean up our act.

So, we learn (or are told) by Friedman that a 'senior Al-Azhar scholar' made a hate-filled video that the prototypical demonstrating Achmed should watch. I agree. Except that the named person did not make a hate-filled video (but six articles on the Ikhwan website; stupid and hateful enough, but not as widely trucked as wildly-inflammatory Youtube videos).

Now, the Progressive Narrative Railroader question could be restated, "Why should Morsi give a shit about an online religious education series (rantings and threats) by Dr. Isma'il 'Ali Muhammad Tubitmula?"

Response: 1) Ali Muhammad wrote that "Jews cannot be relieved of their moral corruption unless their hearts are cut out. 2) He is the Director of Islamic Education at Al-Azhar —and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood

That's why, apparently. Apparently Morsi should keep track of all the senior scholars at Al-Azhar University.

Maybe that is true. Maybe of the 5,000 scholars Morsi should listen to the top. Maybe to the top guy at Al-Azhar, the Mubarak-appointed Grand Sheikh. Maybe to the second top guy, the Grand Mufti.

But Robert compared the "rantings of some Iranian Grand Ayatollah to the Iranian President" as if it were comparable. Any Islamic cleric can issue a fatwa, but in Egypt, there is an actual department at Al-Azhar, Dar al-Ifta, that takes care of such things. A department not headed by Mr Tubitmula Ali Muhammad. Tubitmula is not the equivalent of a Grand Ayatollah ... and so it does not parallel the circumstances in Egypt.

Any Islamic cleric, from the imam of a tiny mosque in the boonies up to the most venerable Grand Mufti or Grand Ayatollah, can issue a fatwa. But those from Al-Azhar carry a lot of weight, especially among Egyptian Sunnis.

This is likely true. But the idiot jew-hater translated by Memri is NOT able to give fatwas ... the most important fatwa from Al-Azhar came already, and was cited above in my last post.

So, the two most important leaders of Al-Azhar come down on the side of reality, in the present day. As of today, we have not heard a word from Ali Muhammad -- nowhere is he quoted commenting on the riots and destruction in Cairo. And nowhere is there a fatwa from Ali Muhammad, with weight or not.

Edited September 23, 2012 by william.scherk

[william.scherk]

Carol, your must stop withholding adjectives.

You are telling her to stop withholding adjectives. Not me.

Exactly. If she wants to get along, she had better toe the line, and adapt her adjectives to your guidelines.

I am not calling for redistribution of adjectives.

Yeah? You do not want Carol to be 'fair' and call out the evul you see in proportion to her calling out evul that she sees? What did I miss in your chastisements?

Well... I am calling for just a little more self-awareness when wagging fingers in the faces of others. But that is given as commentary, not an edict from a "Grand Vizier."

Yikes. Here is the kind of 'commentary' given:

• YOU believe the USA President should be personally involved in such matters
  
• YOU mean the USA President should get personally involved and use the massive power of his office to intimidate people
  
• YOU keep making equivalencies like comparing the "two-bit" of a virtual nobody who is suddenly in the center of a controversy with "two bit" of a long-time major political figure in Pakistan and current Railroad Minister.
  
• YOU are making excuses for evil from the Progressive Narrative,
  
• YOU believe it's OK for a government official or leader to abuse his power so long as this abuse is for a cause you believe in
  
• YOU constantly blast traditional villain figures according to the Progressive Narrative at a ratio of about 99 to 1
  
• YOU are polarized at the buzz whrrrrr bing level, but take umbrage when I mention this.
  
• YOU have very harsh adjectives for the villains in the Progressive Narrative
  
• YOU have no adjectives at all for actual proven villains who preach the Progressive Narrative when they are caught with their pants down
  
• YOU claim a film-maker has blood on his hands and not a word about the actual killers until called on it
  
• YOU: Progressive Narrative villains - Highly charged emotional outbursts, harsh adjectives and lots of posts. Bad people who reflect poorly on the Progressive Narrative - No mention at all unless pushed to, then no adjectives or emotion when you say you do not condone them.
  
• YOU are being reasonable when equating that stuff and I will keep on calling it what it is--unreasonable bias.
  

Personalizing debate (You you you You YOU) degrades discussion. Discerning 'true motives,' sniffing out intentions, and accusing, trying and judging the ratio of adjectives also degrades discussion. Assigning people a role in a retro-fitted and arbitrary narratives does not make them such people, with such interior defects in reasoning, without independence, without integrity.

(btw - You really like the power stuff in human relations, don't you? I see you talk about it all the time...)

What does 'power stuff' in human relations mean? Did I talk about it all the time this week? Can you give concrete examples?

I do not understand the haughtiness and vituperation loaded on Carol at times, Michael. It seems disproportionate and personal, and not your most effective rhetorical gambit. The only person wagging the corrective finger seems to be the Man Who Sees All Narratives Clearly And Perfectly.

Edited September 23, 2012 by william.scherk

[caroljane]

wss, I think sometimes Michael is employing the second plural saying "you", meaning "you liberals], without being specially personal., I will plead guilty to the adjectives or lack of them, whatever they signify, as an internet and marketing analyst Michael may discern things from these markers that we are not aware of.

I don't feel vituperated, just categorised, and it is everyone's right to categorise others according to their own perceptions.

[william.scherk]

We should mention that sodomizing for humiliation in the Arab world is often done with broom handles, sticks, gun barrels and other objects like that.

No. We shouldn't. We should not mention 'sodomy for humiliation' (whatever that is) in the Arab world, unless we have some credible evidence that this is common, true, wide-spread, culturally-bound; nothing in this supposed fact supports the malicious claim that Ambassador Stevens was raped/sodomized for humiliation.

Seriously. Rape is real. Does that mean the accusation of rape against this or that person is true?

Adam confidently asserted that sodomizing enemies is common in Southern Africa (whatever the fuck that had to do with Benghazi). Robert suggested it is known, a fact, that sodomizing enemy dead and near dead 'happens' in Libya.

What kind of evidence do you require before judging this humiliation-by-penis/knife/gun/broom/stick to be 'known'?

This is the kind of incurious cognitive gate-keeping that I abhor, the slack and lazy epistemology of 'everybody knows.' You can do better at identifying this thing than with some off-hand comments.

These things do happen in Libya ...

Edited September 23, 2012 by william.scherk

[caroljane]

We should not have to examine this execrable subject, but since it is here, have our experts on North African culture ever seen "Deliverance?" Human degradation is not especially regional.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

We should mention...

No. We shouldn't.

Well, then I should.

As I do.

And as I will.

I bow to no PC King wannabe.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

William,

I notice you are just as big on accusing people as you accuse other people of being--without bothering to look at what they are talking about.

It's a Progressive thing I see over and over. Finger-wagging spin doctoring.

I suppose Lakoff explains it better. According to the Narrative, you probably grew up in a nurturing household whereas I grew up in one with a strict father.

Michael

[caroljane]

I didn't know there was a Little Blue Book! Is there a Little Red State one too... or do you just adapt the original?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Carol,

I have this book and have read about half of it so far--it's my bathroom reading.

The "little blue" thing is a little wink wink to Mao (The Little Red Book, released in English as Quotations from Chairman Mao), seeing that the Democrats use the color blue.

According to the reviews I have read, they call this kind of insider stuff a dog whistle. And that pisses me off, since I have outlined a themed memoir that deals with Objectivism and addiction as I have lived them called The Siren's Song and The Dog Whistle.

I will probably have to come up with another title since dog whistle now comes with a political load that is misleading to my message.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

What does 'power stuff' in human relations mean?

I don't feel vituperated, just categorised...

William,

Here's a power thing right here.

Carol sees my intent far more clearly than you do, albeit not perfectly.

I'm trying to help her see herself and how her communications appear to others--I'm being a mirror.

You only see a dominance intent--a master--and react accordingly.

Michael

EDIT: incidentally, I am almost sure Carol is not like the image she sometimes projects. That's why I do what I do. If I felt her intent were that, I would treat her like I do the Infidel dude.

[caroljane]

Carol,

I have this book and have read about half of it so far--it's my bathroom reading.

The "little blue" thing is a little wink wink to Mao (The Little Red Book, released in English as Quotations from Chairman Mao), seeing that the Democrats use the color blue.

According to the reviews I have read, they call this kind of insider stuff a dog whistle. And that pisses me off, since I have outlined a themed memoir that deals with Objectivism and addiction as I have lived them called The Siren's Song and The Dog Whistle.

I will probably have to come up with another title since dog whistle now comes with a political load that is misleading to my message.

Michael

You know, seriously, although your original title is evocative, maybe it's better to change it Lakin or no Lakin."Rapture and Reflex" or something. And the dog whistle is kind of a meme anyway, and mixing the seductresses with dogs might offend PC types like me,

You are of course right that if I were American I would be a Democrat, but so would most Cdns , the rest would be moderate Republicans except for jts and maybe Paul Mawdsley, I don'tknow his politics. Yet we have a very right wing Conservative government which is building new prisons though the crime rate is at an alltime low, because it has "secret information", it is secretive to the point of tyranny about public spending and policies affecting government programs. We are you in the obverse.

[caroljane]

EDIT: incidentally, I am almost sure Carol is not like the image she sometimes projects. That's why I do what I do. If I felt her intent were that, I would treat her like I do the Infidel dude.

Michael, with respect and affection, I feel compelled to quote our friend PDS and abandon my customary Respectability.

No offence, but I do not give a rat's ass about the image I project.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

... I do not give a rat's ass about the image I project.

Carol,

Now you're talking my language.

Michael

[Robert Campbell]

Hey! no fair. I want bonus points. I live for bonus points.

Mr Pinocchio is the writer of the Post's Fact Checker blog, Glenn Kessler. I am going to guess who gets awarded long-nose points: members and top politicos and news generators of both parties Republicans!.

Let's check. The last ten 4-Pinocchio entries are:

• 4 Pinocchios for a truncated, 14-year-old Obama clip
  
• New anti-Romney ad: same steelworker, tougher message (revised)
  
• 4 Pinocchios for an unproven Romney claim of ‘crony capitalism’
  
• 4 Pinocchios for Romney’s claim on an Obama health care pledge
  
• Whopper: White House adviser David Plouffe on Romney’sjobs record and GOP strategy
  
• 4 Pinocchios for Obama’s newest anti-Romney ad
  
• Over-the-top attacks on Obama’s green-energy programs
  
• Four Pinocchios: small business tax cut will ‘create 100,000 jobs a year’ (Part 2 on claims about the bill)
  
• Rick Santorum’s ‘kitchen sink’ slam at Romney
  

Now, I seem to have got it wrong. Dang. No points at all for me. Robert?

WSS,

First of all, Mr. Kessler does not always assign all 4 Pinocchios to entirely true statements (though see below).

The question is whether any Pinocchios should go to such statements. A clearly true statement would be getting all of 0 Pinocchios—wouldn't you think?

So how did Mr. Kessler handle the complaints from various Republicans about a diktat, some months back, issued by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius? Secretary Sebelius authorized states to apply for waivers from certain requirements of the TANF program (usually just called "welfare"). Unfortunately, the legislation that turned AFDC (the old welfare program) into TANF contained language expressly forbidding waivers from those very same requirements. The diktat was widely interpreted as "gutting the work requirements" in the 1996 welfare reform law. Which is exactly what it did. Zero Pinocchios, anyone?

Well, Mr. Kessler actually gave Mitt Romney 4 Pinocchios for running an ad complaining that the Obama administration was gutting welfare reform.

More recently Kessler gave Bill Clinton 2 Pinocchios for denying that Ms. Sebelius's diktat gutted the welfare-to-work provisions of the very same bill that then-President Clinton once signed.

Which makes a whole lot of sense, doesn't it?

Now look at what Kessler actually wrote here:

4 Pinocchios for a truncated, 14-year-old Obama clip

and tell me how when the end of the clip is restored, State Senator Obama was not, in fact, still saying he was all for redistribution.

Not that anyone needs a 1998 radio clip to show that Barack Obama stands for redistributing wealth as much as he can fairly be said to stand for anything...

Or at

4 Pinocchios for Romney’s claim on an Obama health care pledge

where, by Kessler's admission, while running for President in 2007-2008, Barack Obama frequently made the very claim referred to by Romney et al. But Kessler nonetheless weasels around it for several paragraphs.

I figure that Kessler occasionally gives Pinocchios to Obama campaign output because either he thinks the campaign has gone completely over the top—or he wants to retain some semblance of credibility.

So called fact-checking, in the American media, is partisanship under a different name.

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

I didn't know there was a Little Blue Book! Is there a Little Red State one too... or do you just adapt the original?

Carol,

George Lakoff is a linguist who for many years now has been promoting a model of political discourse and how it works.

He was and is a real linguist, so there's no need to make fun of his name. (I find him less convincing as a political psychologist, but mileage will vary on that.)

Since one of Dr. Lakoff's explicit aims is to help Democrats improve their "messaging," he will not be writing a Little Red (State) Book to accompany his Little Blue Book.

Robert Campbell

[caroljane]

I didn't know there was a Little Blue Book! Is there a Little Red State one too... or do you just adapt the original?

Carol,

George Lakoff is a linguist who for many years now has been promoting a model of political discourse and how it works.

Since his explicit aim is to help Democrats improve their "messaging," he will not be writing a Little Red (State) Book to accompany his Little Blue Book.

Robert Campbell

By "the original" I meant the Mao one, a joke because here in Canada, the Conservative party is blue and the Liberals are red.

[Robert Campbell]

We should not have to examine this execrable subject, but since it is here, have our experts on North African culture ever seen "Deliverance?" Human degradation is not especially regional.

"Deliverance" was filmed 30 miles from where I live (as the crow flies; the roads get steep and windy before one reaches those locations).

But you wouldn't have to go the banks of the wild and scenic Chattooga, some years back, to find what you're talking about within the boundaries of these United States. Just look at what some members of NYPD did to Abner Louima.

The question is not whether human degradation is restricted to one culture. Obviously and unfortunately, it can be found nearly anywhere.

The question that I thought was before us is whether certain forms or expressions of it are more common in some places than others.

For example, "honor killings," bride burnings, piracy on the high seas, child selling, and the last remnants of chattel slavery do not appear to be evenly distributed across this planet of ours.

Robert Campbell