They’re ignoring it, in hopes you won’t hear about it.
Grrr!!!
The yayhoo who has been filling in for Rush Slimebaugh this past week is still touting the SBV’s as presenting a legitimate challenge to the Kerry campaign and simply giving a “different viewpoint” about his service in Vietnam.
Hellooooo, asshole! It’s been out for a couple of weeks already that the Swift Boat Veterans for Untruth are lying about Kerry’s service record, and that the Navy’s records and the testimony of the men who actually freaking served with Kerry.
But, hey, whatever will help get Shrub re-elected, right?
I heard a debunking of it on NPR a while back.
You know what would be really cool? If the media examined the ads before they were televised and refused to run the ones that were not true. That unfortunately will never happen because it would interfere with the media’s quadrennial troughing by the various presidential campaigns and counter-campaigns.
Which no doubt reached exactly zero True Believers.
I’m sure NPR DID debunk the Fucking Liars at some point, wouldn’t be surprised if CNN and a few others haven’t done so as well (though I’m more than a little surprised about Fox doing so). But that’s part of what’s so galling. Even having run stories debunking the Fucking Liars, I’ve still heard NPR announcers on several occasions blandly referring to the Fucking Liars as, “a group disputing John Kerry’s war record.”
Now, if you didn’t happen to hear the one debunking story (as I did not) you might, based on all the simple references to the Fucking Liars as “a group disputing Kerry’s war record,” assume there was something in Kerry’s war record that is worth disputing. Multiply that effect by every mass media outlet going, and you’ve got a formidable engine for promoting the Fucking Liars’ agenda.
Joe Sixpack hears this crap and assumes there’s an equivalence between the dispute over John Kerry’s war record and the dispute over Bush’s. Nothing could be further from the truth – nobody, not even the Fucking Liars, disputes that Kerry was a combat veteran who served bravely. Nobody disputes the notion that Bush used his Daddy’s LIttle Rich Boy connections to hide out in the National Guard during Vietnam.
But thanks to sloppy and ill-considered “reporting” by the mainstream media, the Big Lie of the Fucking Liars is working.
And journalists wonde why no one respects them any more.
Evil Captor, I feel your pain, but what is NPR to do? Call them liars right in the middle of their news story? That would be a bit biased, don’t you think?
Should they not mention them at all? It’s news that these accusations happened, and they have an obligation to report it, without passing judgement (at least during a news report).
What is it you want them to do, run opinion pieces against it after every news report?
I see your frustration, but I’m not sure how they could handle this any better.
Fuck no. They are liars. Once you’ve shown them to be liars, it is incumbent on you to point out that they’re lying instead of presenting them with a forum to freely promote their lies. How should the media have dealt with Nixon, pointed out once for a half hour that he was a criminal, lying, insane fuckwit then blindly defended him the rest of the time? DO you have any idea how ridiculous this argument is?
No they don’t. They have an obligation to report the truth. The truth is that these people are lying. What’s next, we have to report the views espoused by David Duke without pointing out that they’re racist hogwash?
It’s not an opinion piece. It’s a demonstrated fact that they’re lying, making unfounded accusations, and have close ties to the top echelon of the Bush campaign.
Reporting facts is not opinion just because the facts in the matter happen to be “biased.” This is the same garbage that convinced the media they weren’t allowed to point out the problems in the WMD claims before the war.
laigle, first of all, nobody said anything about defending them.
And as much as you or I might feel that it’s been shown that the swifties are liars (and I do indeed feel that way), it’s still a disputed thing. It’s not a fact like 2+2=4. I’m going to believe the military records and Kerry’s shipmates over the swifties, but that’s still opinion. Because records can be wrong and people can misremember, a unbiased press should not, during what is supposed to be simple reporting of the news, make a judgement.
They should indeed report the counter-claims show how unreliable the swifties’ accounts are, and if they are not then I agree they are not doing their job. But it seems unreasonable to me to do that with every mention.
Jeez, Revtim, didn’t you read the OP? I want mainstream media to say something like, “The Fucking Liars, a group whose claims concerning Kerry have been thoroughly disproved…”
Since when is it BIAS to report the fucking truth? If Bush became a holocaust denier I guess we’d have to take his claims seriously and not mention that they’re bigoted crap, by your standards.
Your notion that we should entertain any collection of scurrilous bilge if someone asserts it shamelessly enough because “it’s disputed” is just laughably brain-dead. Well, not laughably. Because that’s just what the media is doing. And it’s working. So I guess Karl Rove is the one who’s laughing.
You have “interesting” ideas of what consitutes unbiased reporting.
Except for the guy who cries, rants, and whines that only he can see, hear, or say anything meaningful.
-Joe
The whole thing is a non-issue for me personally, but FWIW, this week he had on a guy who was on Kerry’s boat. Didn’t catch the name. And (again FWIW) the Kerry campaign have themselves admitted the Cambodia thing was true.
Shrug.
Moore is a shameless, twisted propagandist vs. Stossel is an thougtful but balanced editorialist. Dime vs. ten cents.
I encourage everyone to check out the new Spinsanity book: All the President’s spin. It gives a brilliantly documented and argued history of how Bush’s administration has brought the age of modern PR tactics for political manipulation into full force. And it makes the case that the Kerry campaign is adopting many of the same tactics: indeed that all political discourse seems to be sliding in the direction, because the Bush administration’s use has been so overwhelmingly successful.
I think the main myth is that the nation is extremely polarized. I mean, in the last couple of years, sure. But we did, you know, have a civil war at one point. Not to mention civil rights era, the vietnam war, etc.
Oh, come on, this debate over whether Kerry was in Cambodia or within three miles of its borders is so fucking beside the point I’m surprised you can mention it without blushing. How the hell does it debunk Kerry’s exploits in Vietnam?
Really, there is no, repeat NO, fucking NO basis to the Swift Boat Veteran’s claims that Kerry didn’t serve courageously in Vietnam.
Actually, I don’t much fucking care about Kerry or Bush’s records during Vietnam, but a lot of people apparently do, that’s why all the lying. And the media shouldn’t be aiding and abetting it by parroting the lies under the pretense of “objectivity.”
Allowing a group to keep a thoroughly discredited lie in the mainstream media without challenge isn’t objectivity. It’s BAD JOURNALISM.
This is what really burns me up, the media has been so hesitant to call Bush on his lies and can’t live up to the fact that they were used as a propaganda machine by a Rovian White House. They still pass the buck and argue that it was “bad intelligence” and “everybody thought Iraq was a threat”. The truth is Bush lied**. (PERIOD)** Where is the critical thinking in the media? The push for this war and the disinformation ploy was on at all levels, …I knew it and I was surprised to see the media behave as such obvious political Tools… so much for free media. They are all a bunch of puppets beholden to money and ratings. They built the freakin’ bandwagon for this stupid unjust war and now they want us to forget about. Well, this chapter in American media will go down in history books as the Göbbelian Renaissance.
“Why won’t the new media repeat every Kerry press release verbatim, and scream insults at anyone who refuses to fall in line?”
Because the US is not the SDMB.
It has no more been proven that every single word Kerry has ever spoken about his Viet Nam record is true than the allegations Bush used cocaine and went AWOL have been proven true. Neither of these has been established as definite fact. The Lockstep Left of the SDMB would like very much for the world to believe it, but it is not been proven.
The fact that the extremist Bush-haters swallow the Kerry campaign spin on everything with the same eagerness that they swallow a stranger’s semen does not mean that it is always true. You don’t want the truth. When it comes to Bush, you wouldn’t recognize the truth if it came up and kicked you in the balls.
According to the latest polls, Bush is slightly ahead, including the narrowest possible lead in the electoral college. The rest of the country has seen the same evidence that all of you have, but not always with the same blinkered determination to believe only half of it.
And I look forward with tempered hope and eager longing to November, and the popping sounds from the heads exploding if Bush wins.
Regards,
Shodan
Due respect, why do you support Bush, Shodan? What about him is conservative? Isn’t it a fact that his fiscal policies are to the left of Bill Clinton? You know that conservatism and authoritarianism are not synonyms, so you know that Stalinist style “patriot” legislation has nothing to do with conservatism. You know that there is nothing conservative about budget deficits or increasing the size and scope of government. And you know that there is nothing conservative about adding more ammendments to the Constititution. So, what is the attraction exactly?
With all due respect back, because he is a better leader for the War on Terror than any reasonable alternative. Certainly far better than Kerry, and almost infinitely better than Nader or any third party candidate.
His tax policies, his desire to bring accountability to education - some others.
No, it is not a fact.
I also know that the Patriot Act has no resemblance to Stalinism.
Very true. And I wish that Bush were as committed to balancing the budget and reducing the size of government as he should be. But there is no other reasonable candidate who is more committed. Kerry is not committed to either.
I don’t see this at all.
Certainly it is more “conservative” to push for amending the Constitution than it would be to appoint judges who will “interpret” it to support whatever is the liberal cause du jour. And a major plus on the Bush side, for me, is that he is likely to nominate candidates who tend more to the “strict constructionist” school of thought.
I don’t want to post and then abandon a thread, but ISTM that a Bush thread, in the Pit, this close to the Republican convention, and predicated on the notion that Bush lied, is probably not going to lead to an interesting discussion. More likely it will become one of those pile-on threads where the resident lefties take turns screaming non sequiteurs and then patting each other on the back that Sam Stone describes in the Swift vet thread(s).
Feel free to respond, and I will read with interest, but please don’t take it amiss if I don’t necessarily continue the debate here. I am getting a little tired of the screaming (not necessarily from you), and I spent a good deal of emotional energy defending myself in a recent Pitting.
FWIW.
Regards,
Shodan
World-weary Shodan, it must be so difficult being an arbiter of truth. Does the burden weigh upon you so?
Have you read All the President’s Spin. Do you care to respond to anything substantive these days with anything other than “well, I just tire of all the screaming, and it’s pointless to argue, ho hum.”