Does Al Franken Lie?

Great Debates
41

Well, it does relate also to the assertion that you have to warp the numbers to put the tax cuts in a good light. The numbers are certainly old. Reliable new numbers are hard to find. Especially if you don’t spend hours looking :wink:

Thank you once again. Head pulled out. I’ll forgive you for making me look through that data this time. :wink:

To some extent, this is what I am talking about. You cannot concentrate on the rate of increase and then criticize Bush for doing the same thing. It seems to me that the argument is about whether or not the tax system should be more or less progressive. But neither side is willing to discuss how progressive it is now.

Well, not quite. What I am talking about is the bottom 80% (households below $58,400 BTW). For every quintile (not 5%, pervert, a fifth or 20%) below the top the share of income went down. However, their share of the tax base went down even more. Meanwhile, everyone in the top quintile saw their share of income increase while their share of the tax base grew more slowly. That is, everyone’s share of the income changed (lowest quintile to highest: -31%, -22.5%, -14.5%, -10.9%, +20.4%) in the same direction but by a greater percentage than their share of the tax base changed(-47.6%, -33.3%, -25.7%, -17.4%, +17.7%). The obvious trend is continued within the top quintile. The top 10%, 5%, and 1%, saw their income share change (+33%, +48%, +91.4%) by larger amounts than their share of the tax base changed (+28.2%, +40%, +66%). While these numbers are in fact old as you point out, it seems very unlikely that the recent tax cuts did much to this trend. You would have to change the tax rates quite a bit to alter it.

These are still only the rates of change. The fact remains that as of 2000 the top 20% of wage earners paid a larger percentage of the federal tax burden than they earned as a percentage of all income. All of the other quintiles pay less of the tax burden than they earn of the income as percentages. The second highest quintile has always been on the border, it seems. Do you have a good site which suggests that this changed with the tax cuts?

Partly, yes. As long as you don’t conclude from this that everyone else’s share of the tax burden increased unnecessarily. The only groups who saw their share of the tax burden increase also saw their share of income increase. And everyone saw their share of the tax burden change by a lower percentage than the change in their share of the income.

As an aside to this hijack do you have a thought how we might compare this rate of the rate of change? I calculated the ratios between the percentage change in tax share to the percentage change in income share, but I’m not sure I understand what it means.

To reiterate myself, I am not saying that taxes are too progressive or too regressive. I am simply saying that honest people can easily disagree. That is, I think the administration and Franken have a point regarding the tax cuts. Although as Scylla wisely suggested they might both be better regarded as partisan rather than objective reporters of the truth. :slight_smile:

Well, I have now had waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much fun looking at these numbers. “We hatesss it! We hatesss it forever!” :frowning:

42

I think if you are interested in finding the truth, you always need to try to minimize bias. I place Franke, Rush, Coulter, and Moore and some others in the highest category of unreliability because of their bias. I don’t think that they are sources that can be relied upon without multiple unbiased corroboration. So, if you need multiple unbiased corroboration in order to rely on them, why not just try to get it in the first place and cut out the bias where you can?

That is, of course if you’re searching for factual truth. If you’re looking to be entertained or have your biases and beliefs validated, these guys are just th ticket and require no corroboration.

As long as you know what yoo’re reading, there’s no problem.

I’m not being paralyzed. It just seems foolish to look for factual analysis from the most biased possible source, or use such a source for factual analysis.

I’ll tell you what I honestly think. I don’t think any of these guys flat out try to lie. I think they make mistakes, get sloppy, and interpret things selectively.

Here’s the key part:

What these parties all share in common is that they have their conclusion set before they begin. They know what the conclusion is going to be before they start. They’ve already decided what they will find.

This means to me that what they actually say is kind of moot. You know what it’s going to be like that’s why you read it.

Can you imagin Al Franken saying “After exhaustive analysis and the use of my fourteen Harvard experts I have concluded that while there are many individual instances of bias, misinterpretation and other problems among the right wing media outlets they are not necessarily any more biased or dishonest than anybody else and often do a very good job and make excellent points from their own point of view”

Or “Rush Limbaugh is a pretty nice guy who cares deeply about issues and strives to paint a full picure, but sometimes fails”

Or “Foxnews really gets beaten up a lot more than it deserves”

Putting aside whether or not these things have any merit, can you actually imagine that it is possible that Al would say them?

Can you see Coulter saying

“While liberals often have different ideas, the vast majority of liberals are deeply committed idealists sincerely working to make the world a better place?”

Can you see Michael Moore saying

“When you really get to know George Bush, he’s a really nice and principled guy?”

These things are all impossible, are they not?
I submit to you then that Al Franken, Moore, Coulter, and Rush are all fundamentally liars on the most basic and important level.

They are not seeking to present reality. They are seeking present their version of reality.

So, in terms of truth, saying Al is more honest than Coulter is like saying Gacy is more humane than Dahmer.

But since it fun, if we are to list them in order of being rotten dirty lying liars then I would say Moore is the worst. He would be followed very closely by Coulter. In a distant third would be Franken and finally Rush. I place Franken in front of Rush in terms of dishonesty because Franken seems to more deliberately target individuals for vilification and then apply that to the whole while Rush paints with a broader and sloppier brush, and to me seems less mean.
None of these people though is trying to sell the truth. What their selling is a fundamental lie if we want to call a spade a spade.

43

Scylla, if I may humbly disagree in a small way. I think the appropriate model for politcal discourse is the law rather than science. What I mean is that you can rely on biased sources for interpretations of data. If your remember that they are biased and look at their interpretations in that light, you can be led in directions you might not otherwise go. You cannot cite a Coulter or Moore as a definitave source, but you can use them as a starting point for discussion. Just as we require lawyers to present evidence and ellicit testimony. We should require partisan sources to provide (in addition to reasoned arguments) sources which can be verified. But just as we allow lawyers to introduce, sequence, and summarize the evidence they present, we should allow partizans to “spin” the information they present.

To my way of thinking, the only real liar is the one who claims to have no bias at all. They’re the ones you have to look out for. The others simply require a little healthy skepticism.

44

(1) I am not faulting Bush for concentrating on the rate of increase. Rather, I am faulting him for looking at the federal income tax in isolation when considering that rate of increase. My point is that the fact that the poor see a bit larger a decrease in percentage terms in their federal income tax relative to the rich is largely irrelevant. That is because, for the poor, this reflects an insignificant percentage decrease in their total federal tax burden or their total overall tax burden.

(2) Franken and frankenlies were concentrating on the question of who gets what with the Bush tax cuts, not the question of who ought to get what. If one believes the top 1% ought to reap a bonanza from these tax cuts and the poor ought to receive very little, one is welcome to make that point. However, that is very different from trying to claim that this is not what is happening.

Yes, the federal tax system in 2000 was somewhat progressive. And, I have no reason to believe that the Bush tax cuts have been dramatic enough to make the federal tax system regressive as a whole. (Although I would not be surprised if it does so at the very top…e.g., if as a result of the capital gains and dividend tax cuts, the top 1% or top fraction of 1% end up paying a lower effective rate on their income than, say, the rest of those in the top quintile. It will be interesting to see.)

Recall that the state and local tax systems, as a whole, remain somewhat regressive. So, it is not entirely clear where the tax system as a whole comes out (and it obviously depends on the state you’re in).

Well, I was looking at this stuff last night and was a bit puzzled by the conundrum that you mention in passing: namely, that everyone saw their share of the tax decrease by a larger amount (or increase by a smaller amount) than their share of the income. This seems to be a bizarre “everybody wins!” scenario and suggested to me that maybe income and tax shares aren’t exactly the right thing to look at.

So, I instead tried looking at ratio-ing the shares, e.g., taking the top quintiles income share and dividing it by the income share that went to everyone but this top quintile. My justification for this was that then when I compared the ratio-ed number for income to the ratio-ed number for taxes, I would be looking at the tax rate for this quintile in comparison to everyone else’s tax rate. I am still not convinced it is the right thing to do. But, it does have the advantage of producing a result where everyone is not a “winner” anymore. In particular, in this scenario, the top quintile sees their (ratioed-in-this-way) tax share increase a bit more than their (ratioed-in-this-way) income share. Since the top quintile is the only one that gained income share during this period and the underlying income tax structure does tax higher incomes at a higher rate, it is perhaps not surprising that this is the case. Note, however, that the top 1% did not see this happen…They still saw their (ratioed-in-this-way) tax share increase a bit less than their (ratioed-in-this-way) income share.

This is in fact in line with something I vaguely recall reading somewhere (CBPP?) which did say that there has been somewhat of a shift of the tax burden (in the sense of their tax rate relative to everyone else’s tax rate) toward the top quintile even at the same time as the burden shifted away a bit from the top 1% (in that same sense). Clearly, the Bush tax cuts will tend to accentuate this effect on the top 1%; what will happen to the top quintile I am less sure about.

But, at any rate, if one wanted to make an argument that anyone needed tax relief because their burden had increased (which I don’t think is the only issue to consider), then it would be the well-off but not rich who are in the top quintile but not in the top 1%. Of course, this quintile did well in income gains compared to everyone else so I am not so sympathetic to their (our?) plight…But, at least there is more of an argument there than there is for aiding the top 1% who saw both absolutely tremendous income gains plus some small lowering of effective tax rates relative to everyone else.

45

So… doesn’t this apply to you and me and most everyone here on the boards as well: fundamentally liars on the most basic and important level?

46

Oh, and in any case, this is changing the goalposts quite a bit. There’s a difference between having a bias, and a general account of how careful you are with your facts and claims in making sure they are true and well supported.

It is certainly meaningful to say that Al Franken more honest with his factual claims than is Michael Moore. Why can’t the same be said about Franken and Coulter? Why change the subject when this comes up?

47

I guess it depends on how far down the scale we are in terms of the priority of our viewpoints and conclusions.

48

We all have bias. There’s no way around it. When bias becomes consciously serviced we become dishonest.

For example, let’s say I hate Kerry. So, I spend a lot of time researching everything that I can find that is bad about Kerry. Along the way, I will probably find things that speak well of him. I won’t use these. I may find other things that are ambiguous or subject to interpretation. I look for things that provide the worst interpretation for these ambiguities and I discard the rest. When I am done, I present my case, and make a long exhaustive list of everything bad that Kerry has done, everything bad about Kerry and everything that could possibly be interpreted badly against Kerry.

I present an overwhelmingly negative case concerning the man. Let’s assume that I’m very careful. Every fact or item I use is literally true.

Is my picture of Kerry accurate?

I would suggest that it is not. I would suggest that it is a lie because I have knowingly ommitted the other side of the argument to present a false picture.

Every good liar knows that the best way to lie is to present the truth selectively.

Doesn’t make it any less than a lie, IMO.

Actually, I really don’t know if Moore is factually more accurate than Franken. I haven’t really conducted a study.

Nor do I know for a fact if Franken is more factually accurate than Coulter.
But if you look at my last post you’ll see that I also share the opinion that Franken is better than Coulter in terms of honesty. Just for fun, mind you.

I think that because they are both completely in service of their preconstructed conclusions that it’s hard to credit either with much honesty.

I consider Coulter to be more dishonest because she is more rabidly and completely in service to her conclusions than Franken.
From a strict fact-checking standpoint, I really don’t know who’s better.

As we’ve seen here, the people trying to prove Franken is a liar have a pretty serious agenda that colors their analysis and it makes it suspect (as does the next cite which is dedicated to proving Franken is honest)

There’s the same kind of thing going on with Coulter.

I think it’s more worth than both these two are worth to conduct an exhaustive analysis in order to show which one confines their lies to literal facts better than the other.

But, if you think Franken is literally more accurate, I can accept that. It seems logical that he would be in writing the book that he did and with as much help as he had.

He has to know that he will get shellacked for any innacuracy, so I have no doubt that he is literally as factually accurate as he can possibly make himself.

49

Well, the argument could be made that social security taxes are not exactly the same thing as income taxes. That is, there is at least a certain accounting of how much an individual has contributed over time. Ostensibly this is to treat the SS taxes more like a long term savings account than a general tax. I won’t go so far as to argue that SS is such a program. I only make the timid suggestion to argue that pointing out the income taxes while talking about tax cuts is not as radical or idiotic as you made it out in your first post on the matter.

I should also note, once again, that I do agree with you that mentioning the federal income tax in isolation is disengenuous. I am only quibbling with the asertion that it is a lie that lying liars tell. :wink:

Well, not directly, perhaps. But unless I am much mistaken, their views on who should get the money are quite clear. I am willing to be wrong on this. I have not read the book.

Well, this is the mischaracterization that the administration argument was trying to address. By definition, a tax cut is not a give away. You can only have more money as a result of the amount you would have paid the year previously.

So, given that the poor’s share of the total tax burden is around 1.1% in 2000, and most of that is in the form of social security, it is not surprising that a tax cut would benifit the rich in absolute terms more than the poor. While it may be disengenuous to characterize the tax cut as benifiting the poor more than the rich (which the income rate in isolation analysis could arguably have done), it is also disengenuous to argue that the tax cut was some sort of steal from the poor scheme. While I may be mischaracterizing Franken’s book, I tend to doubt that.

Well, the cuts would have to be pretty dramatic to do that as well. I’ve been looking at the ratio between the share of the tax burden and share of income. The top 1% pays something like 25% of the tax base while earning about 18% of income. If some of the tax cuts encourage the accepting of more capital gains as income, the cuts could actually increase the income share and the share of taxes. I agree, it will be interest to see.

Well, yes. However, we have to keep the scales in perspective. Since everyone but the top quintile pays a lower percentage of the tax burden than they earn of the total income, a state tax burden would have to be much more progressive and larger to overcome this. I think it is quite unlikely that State taxes are large enough to overcome the progressivity of the federal tax system. Although I agree that it has to be taken into account.

But as long as the economy is growing in absolute terms faster than the tax rates, this is exactly what an analysis should show. We can definately and honestly disagree on which segment of the economy or income group should benifit the most in relative terms. But unless the economy is shrinking, or at least not growing faster than the tax rates, everyone should be doing better.

Careful. This depends on what you are trying to prove.

I am not exactly sure what you mean by this. Can you exand on it briefly? Remember, I am mathematically ignorant and often misunderstand common mathematical terms. :slight_smile:

Again, be careful here. Keep in mind that the economy grew and tax rates fell. That is, everyone got richer and everyone’s tax rate fell. There is no reason to try and make some people look like loosers except for the biased political goals we are deriding in this thread.

Having said that, as long as you are talking about relative “losers” and “winners” the we still have good fodder for debate.

Clearly. And I agree that the top 1% has recieved more of a cut than the rest of the top quintile. However, they still pay a far higher share of the tax burdern relative to their share of the income. Last night, I looked at the ratio of each groups tax share to its income share. It seems that this might (might mind you) be a good measure of progressivity. If the ratio of tax share to income share is equal, then the groups in question might be prety flatly taxed. When I look at the changes in these ratios, it is certainly true that the top 1% lowered its relative share of the tax burden by more than the rest of the top quintile (a decrease of 13% compared to 2% for the quintile). However, they still pay a higher share of the tax burden relative to their share of the income (a ratio of 1.4 compared to 1.2 for the quintile).

Well, unless the argument that “aiding” the top 1% moves the economy more than other tax cuts.
In summation (and I’ll drop the hijack for this thread) I think that Scylla hit the nail on the head when he characteriszes accurate but misleading statements as lies as well. In this sense, the administration claims that poor people’s tax rates were reduced more than rich people’s tax rates may have been accurate, but they were certainly misleading. In that sense, Franken gets a brownie point for pointing this out. However, in my estimation, he looses it by fallinf prey to the same flaw. He fails to mention pertinent facts as well. In other words, if you are going to accuse partisans of bias, you should make damn sure that your arguments are very well rounded IMHO.

Is it just my bias, or is it really that hard to determine a biased source. Whenever I hear political discourse with a plethora of absolutes I almost always get nonplussed. In other words, when a political pundit starts talking about all of the poor are this, or all of the rich are that, I begin to dismiss their main argument as hyperbole. I may pick out a fact here or there, but I definately ignore or discount their conclusions.

50

Scylla, I can’t imagine Franken saying that Fox News gets beaten up unfairly – but I can easily imagine him defending other, less loathsome Republicans.

My point is that you’re lumping Coulter and Franken into the same group of biased liars based purely on their bias, completely ignoring the fact that Coulter has been shown to lie a lot more than Franken has. Once again, I think, you’re being far too quick to accuse people of being liars. If you’ve got firm evidence that Franken regularly lies, I’m interested in seeing it; otherwise, I think it’s unfair to accuse him, based purely on the fact that he is a political advocate, of being a liar.

Having strong political views and having integrity are not mutually exclusive.

Daniel

51

Crap. I misread your post, and now I risk being accused of lying about your views. Before you do that, let me address the part that I misread, and that confuses me:

I don’t understand this. What do you mean by “honesty” if not “makes a genuine effort to get their facts straight”? For political pundits with reasonable reasources, wouldn’t fact-checking really be the gold standard for measuring honesty?

But I retract where I said that you ignore the fact that Coulter lies more than Franken; as near as I can tell, you don’t so much ignore that as consider it irrelevant.

Daniel

52

Sorry to be triple-posting, but this is just astonishing to me, both for its confusion of what “honesty” means and its ranking.

First, the rankings. Are you serious that Rush doesn’t deliberately target individuals for vilification? Granted, I’m not a big listener, but I read The Way Things Ought to Be and the first third of See, I Told You So, as well as having seen a few of his shows and his Letterman performance. He’s a fucking vicious little man. He mocked River Phoenix after his death; he talked about how Spike Lee would encourage riots with his movies. He talked about how ugly Chelsea Clinton was as a teenager, for God’s sake. Franken mocks specific political figures, but I’ve never seen the level of cruelty from him that I’ve seen from Limbaugh.

But cruelty and honesty are unrelated. I’ve seen plenty of errors from Limbaugh; in reading his book at age nineteen I was finding errors or exagerrations or distortions on every other page. (That’s not an exagerration – I eventually quit marking the distortions with bookmarks because it was becoming fruitless).

Finally, the only thing anyone can try to present is their version of reality. A person has access to nobody else’s version of reality. Honesty entails presenting your version as completely and fairly as possible, entails researching carefully, involves not stating lies in an effort to convince other people that your version is correct.

It is sloppy to call someone a liar for presenting their version of reality, slides dangerously close to the worst elements of postmodernism. If you want to judge someone’s honesty, look at whether the facts they present are accurate or not.

It’s a lot tougher than looking at how mean or opinionated they are, but it’s the only way to make an honest judgment.

Daniel

53

If I may but in just a little.

I think the answer to this suggests an answer to your previous post. If I may suggest, I think Scylla was trying to say that this is one way, but it is not sufficient. You also have to consider whether or not the facts presented are relevant and sufficient to reach teh conclusions presented. A partisan can make an entirely accurate and totally misleading argument simply by choosing his data. In that sense looking at the accuracy of claims presented tells you very little about whether or not the conclusion is correct. It is in this sense, however, that a percieved bias can lead you to discern the honesty of the conclusion.

Please forgive me if I have mischaracterized your argument Scylla

54

Well, we are firmly in the realm of opinion here, and I’ll tell you why I base mine as I do, and you are free to disagree. I’ve read Franken, and listened to Rush. Rush has been on the air for fifteen years for three hours a day. In that time, you are indeed correct that he’s said some terrible things about individuals. You are drawing these things from a very large pool of material compared to Franken’s discourse. It is my opinion, and I think it’s a good one, that Franken is much more prone to targetting individuals viciously than Rush is as a percentage of volume.

I’m not so sure, about this. I beleive what you said. Rush is presenting a one-sided view and it is distorted as you said. I think though when we talk about the kind of cruelty employed by pundits that it is a lie. We’re talking about cruelty through one-sided vilification, and IMO, it’s usually dishonest.

I gotta disagree with you. If you are attempting to present your version of reality, or support your version of reality, you are doing something that is to a varying degree, dishonest. Reality is reality. If you are presenting a mere version as the genuine article than you are lying. That’s what pundits do. They present a version as if it were the actual truth.

All the really good liars know that the best way to lie is to present the truth selectively. It’s still a lie.

55

Well, I’ll try and tell you where I’m coming from. My evidence concerning Franken and Coulter comes from respective websites investigating their relative integrity with various axes of their own to grind. It seems to me that the websites dedicated to defending Coulter have a pretty clear desire to do so, as do the ones that seek to vilify her. The same goes for Franken.

I’ll tell you sincerely, I don’t know which one tends to be more factually accurate. I suspect you don’t either, despite your confidence.

When I consider the amount of work and diligence it would take to really settle the question definitively, I think it’s a pretty difficult and pointless task.

It seems to be an issue you’d like to discuss, so I’ll tell you my best guess it that Franken is more factually accurate, and hence I agree with you. But, I don’t think it matters much since they both seem to strive pretty hard for technical factual accuracy.

For example, Coulter was caught on the Dale Earnhardt thing not making the New York times. She recanted the error and claims to regret it.

Franken got some Limbaugh study’s results wrong and has similarly admitted the error.

Neither of them has any rationale for wanting to make factual errors.

But if you got proof that one is more accurate then the other, I wouldn’t mind seeing it.

56

Not really. That would be the standard for accuracy, not honesty. I gave a John Kerry example a few posts ago. To recap. There is a lot of data available on John Kerry.

Let us say for purposes of example that exactly half the data shows Kerry to be a superior Presidential candidate and the other half says that he’s an inferior one.

Now if you or I were to asess this data in it’s completeness and we were both reasonable men we would be forced to conclude that Kerry is middle of the road or mediocre in terms of his candidacy (just an example here, not saying it’s true.)

Let’s say we’re not honest. Let’s say you like Kerry and I hate him. If we both abandoned integrity you would use the half that says Kerry is superior and present a glowing picture of Kerry.

I would use the half that says that he is horrible and present a terrible picture.

Neither of these pictures would be honest, or represent integrity. Both might be entirely factually accurate.

Since we both had access to the exact same data, and since we both demonstrated the ability to discern the positive from the negative in our relative dissertations, and since we both chose willingly to discount what we did not like, we have both actively manipulated the truth for our own ends to present a false reality. We would both be liars.

I’ll say it another way.

I evaluate a new drug. I test it on 500 mice. 250 mice die, the other 250 mice are cured without ill effect.

If my evaluation reads “This new drug is great. It presents a total and complete cure in fully half the subjects that take it! No other drug produces such an extraordinary cure rate. We should market it immediately based on its success rate.” would you agree that I am a very bad man? Would you agree that while I was accurate I was in fact lying?

If you evaluate it and write “This drug is horrible. It kills half the subjects that take it. It should be totally abandoned.” aren’t you also lying though you are accurate.

The reality is that we have a potentially promising drug with severe side effects that needs a lot more work.

I have presented a lie saying that the drug is ready.

You have presented a lie saying the drug is hopeless.

Both of us were factually accurate.

Actually, I just suspect that it’s true. I don’t really know it, and I’m not sure that its especially relevant, as I guess that both try to be factually accurate and are for the most part.

57

Scylla, I tend to agree with you, and this may be just semantics, but technically speaking what you are describing isnt quite lying per se, its whats called ‘bullshit’, or to use a more pleasant term for the more effete readers, ‘good marketing’.

I agree with you though, Frankenstein, Thrush, Coldturd; theyre all a bunch of interchangable bullshitters.

Franken isnt so much mad at their lying; he’s mad at Rush and Coldturd’s inept practicing of the art of bullshit. Thats really what it is. And he apparently thinks it his duty to provide them with exceptional demonstrations of the true art of bullshit, called ‘slinging shit’. One trait of good bullshit is that it doesnt contain any lies. If it did, it would be too easy to detect it ~as~ bullshit.

No no, the true bullshitter selectively chooses which truths to reveal (and, of course, which ones to hide), in order to give the target a false impression. Its the rhetorical equivalent of the magicians ‘Here, watch my hand’. Thats wherein the art lay; any moron can lie, but only a master can Bullshit. Frankenstein is just full of righteous professional outrage at these two pretenders who dare try to practice his appointed calling of Bullshit.

Frankenstien has an easy job of it though; all he has to do is point out the errors in Thrush and Coldturd’s bullshit. Hell, without that fat loudmouth Thrush, Frankenstein wouldnt be the millionaire he is today. He is pretty much defined by his enemies. Same goes for fatboy and fratgirl. They all need each other.

I wouldnt expect to see another book from Frankenstein until another conservative writes a book. His pattern thus far has been to re-act, not act; and thus far he’s become a millionaire doing it.

Good thing too; Frankenstein certainly didnt make any money off of his movie, but what the hell; all he has to keep telling himself is; He’s good enough, he’s smart enough and doggonit, people like him.

58

Not at all. I think you’ve done a great job, and with a lot more succinctness, than I am prone to.

I tend to get pissed off at what appear to me to be blatant, obvious, and deliberate mischaracterizations put together for rhetorical effect.

Any innacuracy in a good faith effort is hardly cause for ire.

59

Scylla, we may be talking at crosspurposes. That’d be a change, eh?

First, my agreement: yes, if someone knows facts that undermine their argument and facts that support their argument, and they tell the latter while hiding the former, that’s dishonest. I was being simplistic when I equated honesty with accuracy.

HOWEVER, it is legitimate for an advocate to emphasize the facts that strengthen their argument, assuming they legitimately believe their argument is on balance sound. In a free-speech society, an advocate for a cause might legitimately believe that readers can find multiple sources of information, read about an issue from multiple perspectives, and make up their own minds. As long as the advocate isn’t actively hiding or distorting facts, there’s no honesty concern, I believe, in emphasizing the facts that support your case.

Now, a clarification. When I say that a person can only present “their version” of reality, I didn’t mean that we all live in different realities and it’s like totally trippy, dude. I simply refer to the truism that a person ultimately has just one perspective on reality, and when talking to other people, they can only talk about those things they’ve experienced directly or indirectly. When you present “your version” of reality, you’re presenting your experiences of reality, including what you’ve read, what you’ve thought, what you’ve seen, etc. Setting aside God, there is no truly objective way to look at objective reality; rather than calling people liars for speaking from an individual perspective, I’d call them humans.

Ultimately, as I’ve said before, I try to reserve the word “liar” for egregious cases, and I think it cheapens what is IMO a very serious charge to conflate being opinionated with being a liar. Would the word “polemicist” fit what you’re describing? if so, I’ll certainly agree with you that Franken is a polemicist, and I’ll say that I trust what he says about politics less than I trust what (for example) the nutrition label on a box of cereal says about its contents. However, that’s a different issue for me than whether Franken is lying; from what I know about him, he only lies in the course of practical jokes, and takes pains not to distort the facts he offers in his semiserious public materials. I can’t say the same about Coulter or Limbaugh or Moore, which is why I do consider them liars.

Daniel

60

Scylla, I see what you’re talking about with respect to bias. But I disagree with your conclusion.

I’ve read Lies… by Franken and was pretty impressed. It was clear that he and his team had done their homework. The parts that especially impressed me were where he demonstrated the outright… well, lies of the people pictured on the cover. Lies of comission, if I may use the Catholic terminology. Instances where people specifically SAID something that was not true, not merely where they failed to say something else that was also true.

After looking at Franken, Franken Lies, Franken Lies Lies, etc ad nauseum, it seems that Franken’s lies of comission are very minimal, if extant at all. I’ve only read excerpts of Rush and Ann, but I can see that they often commit lies of comission. Franken observed the same thing, and he called them on it (along with Sean Hannity, that guy who used to work for CBS, Bill O’Reilly, and others).

That being said, of COURSE he commits lies of omission – not telling the whole truth. He didn’t set out to write The Encyclopedia of Everything Political that Happened since George W. Bush Took Office.

You give equal weight to the active lies and the passive lies, and more or less find that they’re all “liars.” I don’t think that’s valid.

Just my two bits.

P.S. All that being said, there were parts of the book I couldn’t understand, probably because his words were being muffled by Clinton’s cock in his mouth. Oy vey.