Except subliminal (or “subliminable”, as I prefer it) messages don’t work. Try again, buckaroo.
December, are you actually Andrew Sullivan?
Milos, apos, manhattan:
Good God, You guys. Read some papers, listen to some debates, will ya? “Fragmentary quoting” is (as already noted) a very popular rethorical means used by high and low.
It does not count as lying. There are formal rules for how to handle quotes. Unproper handling of quotes would be alterning the wording without the use of brackets or taking away parts without indicating it with the use of periods like so “…”. So formally the quote is correct. Calling it a “lie” is quite simply an ignorant statement.
It is more properly called a “manipulation” / “distortion”. But the most factually way to denote it would be “fragmentary quoting to imply a coherent argument that is not present in the original text”.
Compare with the use of the similar technique “quoting out of context” to imply a non-existing statement. For example: Remember when Chiraq said he would veto every UN resolution that authorized war on iraq? Remember hearing that? Remember reading that? Remember saying that?
But funnily enough Chiraq never said that. It was a quote out of context that completely altered the meaning of his original statement.
All those people repeating that info Big Fat Liers that should lose their job? Fine by me.
Another healthy reference you can check out this thread where you’re rightist buddy skip tries to prove that the Palestinian Authority are terrorists by the use of a bunch of fragmentary quotes that he got from the Wikipedia, but with probable original origin off Pro-Israeli web sites.
These techniques are indeed worthy of attention and critique, but proper, proportional critique. Something you guys are familiar with?
Why, if Dowd is really a Big Fat Liar that should lose her job, so are you every time you tried to pass off an implied argument through the use of fragmentary quoting. Would any of you guys pass that test when looking through your past posts now, hmm?
Finally: on the “Busy chasing off Saddam” part. This is clearly the opinion of the columnist. Anyone suprised to find opinions in a column? You guys crack me up.
Milum: " But I wonder, why do over 90% of the responders to this thread disagree with mr. december, or grudgingly agree but with a disclaimer."
Gosh, that’s an easy question! Because december has the reputation of a partisan troll. (Not just a partisan mind you, which many of us are, but a partisan troll.)
If december were consistently concerned with objectivity in journalism or governance, then you might have the substance of debate in some of his OPs. But we’re talking about someone who a) appears to get most of his information from inflammatory weblogs like Sullivan’s or the WSJ on-line op-ed page and b) does not seem to understand the difference between journalism and op-eds.
Now my opinion on Dowd is fairly close to Apos’s. So far as I can tell, the NYT publishes Dowd because she’s funny. Although I’m fairly sure she started out covering stories, she’s primarily a political comedian. She works for the Time’s op-ed page b/c she’s sharp enough to fill the spot of lone female columnist, but not incisive enough (or, I might add, feminist enough) to threaten anyone.
As Apos says, American punditry has become sloppy and it’s almost always sub-journalistic. But that is hardly exclusive to the NYT, several of whose columnists write well and incisively given their space limitations.
That said, it’s a bit ridiculous to expect very much from anyone’s 500-800 word column. If you want to judge the Times, you should judge them at least partly if not primarily by their reporting–which constitutes about 95% of what they publish. Though I agree that a serious paper shouldn’t allow its columnists to publish misleading information. And whether she cut-and-pasted from someone else (which I doubt), or edited on her own, Dowd’s quotation was distorting (though the rest of her column was in line with counterspin as usual). I suspect if anyone called for a retraction on that single point, they might get it.
But, to open up the debate a bit, what else do we have going on in our great American crucible of discourse?
Well here’s a short piece by a female columnist whose column I almost always like, and it happens to take the form of a critique of a different NYT columnist, Thomas Friedman. Here’s the first two paragraphs:
"*Tom Friedman doesn’t care if the United States ever finds weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The recently discovered skull of a murdered Iraqi political prisoner is all the retroactive justification he needs for the pre-emptive war: “That skull, and the thousands more that will be unearthed, are enough for me,” he wrote in his April 27 New York Times column. “Mr. Bush doesn’t owe the world any explanation for missing chemical weapons (even if it turns out the White House hyped this issue).”
Nothing succeeds like success. Who cares about WMDs when you have Baghdad? Just the usual handful of liberal columnists, it seems–oh, and the rest of the world, which is less willing than Mr. Friedman to be hoodwinked in the interest of a higher cause. Here in America, we’ve already forgotten about the nuclear evidence that wasn’t. When the proposition that aluminum tubes found in Iraq could have been used to refine uranium was debunked by UN atomic energy head Mohamed ElBaradei, and when the evidence Colin Powell presented that he said proved Iraq had imported uranium from Niger turned out to be based on forged documents, did the ubiquitous former CIA analyst Kenneth Pollack, whose The Threatening Storm specifically argued for war on the grounds that Saddam was developing nuclear weapons, say, “Oh well, never mind”? (Come to think of it, did Pollack, on his rounds as a TV commentator, ever point out that his book called for war after breaking Al Qaeda and cooling Israeli-Palestinian tensions?)"*
Now this is old news and I’m not trying to hijack this into a debate about WMDs. But I’d like to point out, for Milum’s sake if no one else’s, that we won’t find december delving into the provenance of these government-generated mistruths, nor doing anything but accusing those who do of leftwing bias or anti-Americanism. Nor do I recall us getting any retractions from the Bush administration of late.
Just prior to the war I posted an extremely misleading statement by Fleischer, deliberately worded to make Iraq seem responsible for 9/11–but not a peep from december. And yet he’ll focus on the slipperiness of Dowd’s language as though he were Jacques Derrida himself.
And here’s yet another female columnist on the subject of yet another op-ed–this time in the Wall Street Journal:
"*In last Friday’s Wall Street Journal, former Dan Quayle speech-writer and charter member of the rightwing, antifeminist Independent Women’s Forum Lisa Schiffren shared her sex fantasies:
‘I had the most astonishing thought last Thursday. After a long day of hauling the kids to playdates and ballet, I turned on the news. And there was the president, landing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, stepping out of a fighter jet in that amazing uniform, looking–how to put it?–really hot. Also, presidential, of course. Not to mention credible as a commander in chief. But mostly ‘hot’ as in virile, sexy and powerful. You don’t see that a lot in my neighborhood, the Upper West Side of Manhattan. (I’m told there’s more of it in the ‘red’ states.)’"*
Yeah, too bad the Times hasn’t looked into Schiffren’s availability :rolleyes:
Yet somehow this nonsense has not hit december’s radar–perhaps because Andrew Sullivan, much like december himself, won’t criticize anything that isn’t published in a paper with alleged leftwing bias.
I think anyone whose read my posts over the years knows that media criticism is a strong interest of mine. But debate the quality of journalism with the SDMB’s leading one-trick pony?
No thanks.
Hm, my post was RE: Manhattan & Milum - NOT apos. Sorry dude!
I would hope that you hold journalists and columnists to a higher standard then us mere internet posters. But, if you are a fan of Dowd, that may not be the case.
No doubt about it! You guys have convinced me! Anyone placed in a position of public trust like Ms. Dowdy should eschew obfuscation, verbal chicanery, and fabrications. All such person who do so should be immediatly impeached. Or fired. Whichever is appropriate.
For heaven’s sake, Dowd cut the quote apart so that it looked like Bush was saying “al-Queda is no longer a threat.” Then she could point to the attacks in Saudi Arabia and crow, “The President said they were no longer a threat! He lied! He’s a fool!” Blah blah blah.
And many of the usual suspects on the SDMB obediently rise to the bait.
An anti-Bush partisan distorts a quote to discredit the President. In other news, the sun rose in the east this morning.
Regards,
Shodan
Shodan:
*"For heaven’s sake, Dowd cut the quote apart so that it looked like Bush was saying “al-Queda is no longer a threat.” Then she could point to the attacks in Saudi Arabia and crow, “The President said they were no longer a threat! He lied! He’s a fool!” Blah blah blah.
And many of the usual suspects on the SDMB obediently rise to the bait.
An anti-Bush partisan distorts a quote to discredit the President. In other news, the sun rose in the east this morning."*
Actually, Dowd did not say the president “lied.” Indeed, your stating that she did is as much of a distortion (technically speaking a worse distortion) than her misleading editing of a quotation.
That said, I’m not interested in discrediting you–though I do want to see if you’re ready to discredit yourself.
Do you really think that this kind of thing–the decontextualization or editing of a quotation to make it seem more damning than it is–doesn’t happen every day of the week in some place like the WSJ, or on Fox, or what have you?
If so, the next time you look in the mirror, check out that “usual suspect.” And enjoy your stay in decemberland.
I imagine that it does happen. Personally, I would damn any specific instance that is brought to my attention as lying.
If one can’t destroy a person’s real arguments or real beliefs, one tries to fake the arguments or beliefs. It merely reveals how lame my side would be if I felt it necessary to alter someone’s words.
In other words, if GWB is so evil/stupid/whatnot, use his real words to discredit him.
Julie
You’re right. BUt it’s also true that Bush said, “Al Qaeda is on the run.” And if recent events in Saudi Arabia are indeed linked back to Al Qaeda, he was proven horribly wrong.
Looks to me like nearly everyone here has agreed that Dowd distorted Bush’s comments. Why is it that the Republicans can’t admit that Bush was distorting the truth as well?
Daniel
Actually, I did not say that she “did” say that; I said that (after misrepresenting the actual quote) she “could” say it. Possible future action != definite past action.
As long as we are discussing misquotation and false attribution by the left. See also futureman making stuff up and attributing it to december.
I am not sure - are you agreeing with me that the quote was deliberately distorted, in order to make a political accusation? And that this is a bad thing to do?
Did you want to try to parse the difference between “no longer a threat”, and “on the run…and slowly but surely being decimated” while having half your leaders dead or in jail?
If Dowd had written to the effect that “Bush said al-Queda is on the run, and here we have another terrorist attack by them”, it would have been (in my view) a legitimate point. The issue I think we are all having is the misleading misquotation making it appear that the President said al-Queda is no longer a threat, when he said that they were on the run and slowly being decimated (a Latinate word originally meaning “reduced by 10%”).
I think it is dishonest to try to make it appear that the President was issuing any kind of an iron-clad guarantee that al-Queda would never make a terrorist attack again. Possibly it was inadvertent. Based on Dowd’s history, I rather doubt it, but it is still possible.
Therefore, I think december makes a legitimate point. Yes, I am a Bush supporter, just as others in this thread, to say the least, are not (hi, elucidator). But perhaps the Bush partisans can take care of the distortions and misrepresentations coming from the Left, and the rest of you can deal with those coming from the Right.
Or else only one side will pass unchallenged.
Regards,
Shodan
Maybe this is our disagreement. The folks on the left here are for the most part admitting that Dowd distorted what Bush said.
I don’t think it’s sufficient for us lefties to leave it up to folks on the Right to point out our allies’ distortions and misrepresentations; I think we gotta police ourselves.
Similarly, I don’t think y’all on the right should leave it up to folks on the left to point out the distortions and misrepresentations of folks on the right: you oughtta be coming down on Bush yourselves for his misrepresentation.
Daniel
That’s a high standard, which few of us could meet. One site that does so is www.spinsanity.com. It’s run by 3 lefties, but they are equally critical of spin from either side. They even defended Rush Limbaugh once or twice, although they more frequently have criticized him.
Honesty is a high standard? Because that’s what I’m talking about: looking honestly at what people are saying and doing, and formulating arguments based on that, rather than based on whether you agree with their politics.
I’m not asking for perfection in it – I’m just asking for a little effort, is all.
Daniel
Well, you may not be sure, but as a regular reader of the WSJ editorial page, I can tell you that this is small potatoes by their standards. If something of this magnitude was the worst misrepresentation, distortion, half-truth, or lie one found on their editorial page, I’d call it a good day…actually, I’d call it a very good day!
Here’s what I think:
-
Maureen Dowd is a miserable, unfunny hack.
-
She intentionally clipped Bush’s quote to make it look more incriminating
-
That said, the full quote doesn’t hold up to scrutiny much better
Dowd is condemning Bush for the implied conclusion of his statement; her cutting of this quote is mildly disingenuous, but it’s not a distortion of the overall meaning by any stretch. It’s not like this happened:
**
BUSH: “I would love to see Saddam Hussein brought to justice.”
DOWD: After taking us through that war, Bush finally revealed his true colors–he had the nerve to tell us, “I … love … Saddam Hussein.”**
Let me ask december et al this: What was the point of Bush’s statement? Though he never comes out and says it dead-on, the whole reason he’s mentioning Al Qaeda’s decapitated leadership is because he wants the audience to conclude that Al Qaeda is less of a threat.
While I would agree with such a conclusion, the extreme of that (Al Qaeda is NO threat) is obviously untrue.
So Bush wanted to tout what he saw as his achievements. Dowd wanted to deflate him and remind that the world is far from safe from Al Qaeda.
I don’t see the big stink, myself. Business as usual on both sides.
So,
Shodan & Brutus & Manhattan & Milum and JSGodess
none of you guys took the trouble to respond to how you feel about the Chirac analogy i posted here. It would still be veeery interesting to hear your take on that…
How about a compromise; let’s all agree that
(a) Maureen Dowd was caught trying to spin Bush’s spin, and
(b) december was swiping blogs to be a partisan troll yet again
Hmmm?
It doesn’t sound like a misrepresentation to me. Except as Dowd presented it, and we are agreeing (I think) that she misrepresented what Bush was saying.
What Bush said is probably unprovable, which might be partially why he phrased it as he did. It is also likely to be why Dowd felt it necessary to distort it - otherwise, nothing Bush said would have been objectionable.
So she changed it.
RandySpears - who exactly are you saying misquoted Chirac? If it is me, feel free to show where, and I will apologize as appropriate.
Regards,
Shodan