Lies, Selective reporting and other links

Hamlet: Will you play upon this pipe?

Guildenstern: My lord, I cannot.
Hamlet: I pray you.
Guildenstern: Believe me, I cannot.
Hamlet: I do beseech you.
Guildenstern: I know no touch of it my lord.
Hamlet: It is as easy as lying.
– Hamlet, Act III

Speaking of lying, check out Alexandra’s excellent exposition of just how successful the press has been in selling the idea that no one ever said nuthing about WMD until President Bush did. Good piece. It all can’t be said enough, given how easily folks forget while they’re voting for Taylor Hicks because it means…something.

Check out this headline: U.S. Economy: Growth May Slow From 5.3% Annual Rate. Holy crap! Not “Economy surges to 5.3% growth” (the headline we would have seen were the president someone with a D after his name) but a warning that IT MAY SLOW! (Newsflash, it probably will, that’s not likely a sustainable rate…). I mean, can they be any more OVERT than that? I saw another headline, same subject, but it said that the 5.3% rate was “less than anticipated.” Because in the world of Bush Derangement Syndrom, GOOD NEWS IS NOT ALLOWED AND MUST BE SPUN NEGATIVE IN EVERY CASE.

Hey, Al Gore says yeah, he’s exaggerating, or “overstating” (it used to be called lying) the whole global warming hoo-hah, but it’s okay because, you know…it’s “important.” Huh. Advancing one’s agenda is always “important,” isn’t it?

What was that title from a few years back…Lying Liars and the wha-the?

Perhaps that’s why it is so easy for the press to ummm…well, we’ll be kind and say “distort and misreport.”

I don’t know about you, but I just can’t read enough about how the AP or other news outlets select exactly what parts of what quotes they want us to know about as they continue “framing” rather than reporting the news.

For example, Ed Morrissey has this example of the AP determining that you didn’t reallllly need to know what Osama bin Laden said, not really. Ellipses sure are handy things, aren’t they? It’s cool, isn’t it?

And then, Lou Dolinar gives us the lowdown on all the heroic news the MSM missed on Katrina in their tireless attempt to paint as bleak and desolate a picture and under which to bury the American President. Jonah Goldberg has a thoughtful column on it and on how long we’ll have to wait for the press to begin to address their own excesses and prejudices.

There’s more, of course, and it’s very serious. Kobayashi Maru says the press is watering down Ahmadinejad and the threat he poses.

According to Google News, 56 stories contained that phrase, while a total of 1074 were ‘related’ to it. By contrast, the rest of Ahmadinejad’s remarks – and, we would argue, the most relevant part that sets “historic slap” in its proper context – appeared in only seven, with a total of 619 ‘related’ to it. What is the context of those remarks?

“Today, Iran has mastered the entire nuclear fuel cycle, from start to finish, thanks to young Iranian scientists. The enemies are looking to plot and want to create differences among Iranians to stop us getting our rights. But if they do the slightest damage to the Iranian people, if they commit the slightest aggression, they will receive an historic slap.” [emphasis added]

A little different, no? Mastery of “the entire nuclear fuel cycle” and “historic slap” are clearly linked ideas… the fuel cycle that’s going to be used entirely for generating electricity…

You’ll want to read Koba’s whole piece – it’s a little long, but it links to more half-reported-or-distorted Iran news in the press, so it’s important.

Rick Moran is looking at the mind-boggling consequences of Bush Derangement Syndrom, a very good piece – very eye-opening and alarming. Once more, we see ideas being promulgated or supressed in order to appeal less to real thought and more to paranoia, knee-jerkism and emotionalism. This is very worrying. There seems no way to put apply the brakes to this trend.

Elsewhere, check out terrific quotes in a good post from Chickenhawk Express. Elaborating on the idea that President Bush is the right man at the right time, this is onesuch quote:

“The President must be greater than anyone else, but not better than anyone else. We subject him and his family to close and constant scrutiny and denounce them for things that we ourselves do every day. A Presidential slip of the tongue, a slight error in judgment – social, political or ethical – can raise a storm of protest. We give the President more work than a man can do, more responsibility than a man should take, more pressure than a man can bear. We abuse him often and rarely praise him. We wear him out, use him up, eat him up. And with all this, Americans have a love for the President that goes beyond loyalty or party nationality; he is ours and we exercise the right to destroy him.”
– John Steinbeck

Touching on the same topic, Searchlight Crusade who is “neither religious nor conservative” still finds that the animus being directed toward President Bush, from everywhere, is undeserved. He writes:

Perhaps in twenty years we (as a society) will appreciate him the way we do Ronald Reagan now. It seems a rule of politics that conservatives are never accorded their due until they are safely beyond office.
[…]
Compare and contrast this man’s gentlemanly treatment of the press and his opposition, while they take every opportunity they can make or create to tar and feather him, a la the Two Minute Hate. Substitute left wing professors for the Thought Police, and the Legacy Media for the Ministry of Truth, and President Bush maps amazingly well into Emmanuel Goldstein.

One suggestion: Challenge anyone indulging in the ritual of the Two Minute Hate to come up with one good thing about President Bush. I’m as nasty a Clinton detractor as you can be, but I am rational enough to give him credit where credit is due…
[…]
Five and a half years into his presidency, President Bush has a list of accomplishments in the face of adversity that the vast majority of his predecessors would envy and all of them…would respect. Creating a moral compromise on fetal tissue. Rescuing our morale from 9/11. Ably prosecuting the War On Terror. Standing firm in the face of domestic opposition bigger than anything since 1864. Negotiating a real alternative to Kyoto that maybe someone intends to, you know, actually adhere to. Stimulating our domestic economy with two tax cuts. I don’t care for his spending and government growth, and I was hoping for more from him on immigration, but considering the policies Gore and Kerry have espoused, infinitely preferable. He has reached out across the aisle to his opposition more times than any other president in my memory, and had his shoes metaphorically spat upon more often than not, and still he keeps trying.

Indeed.

In other news, Radio Equalizer reports that Air America is teetering. And the German-born pope is going to visit Auschwitz.

The Enron verdict is guilty. It will be spun as a disaster for the Bushies, and no mention will be made of Clinton bringing Enron folk to India with him while in office or of his playing golf with Kenny Boy. What’s new?

Vanderleun is having bad thoughts.

This is obvious to anyone who has been paying attention to the degeneration of the “liberal arts” in higher education into the “liberal hegemony” of higher education. But still, seeing the Moonbat Mall red in tooth and claw, I had to wonder why we allow this all to go on.

It was then I had my “bad” thought which, to make myself pure again, I must confess here to all the world. It is this:

No, you’ll have to go read it over there. Quite interesting.

Shrinkwrapped has smart thoughts on commencement addresses and Maxed Out Mama expounds on them very well.

There is a humdinger of a debate going on in the comments section of this post by neo-neocon.

Bernard is angry, angry, angry, but he’s but he’s trying to keep a sense of humor about it.

New England Republican feels I have been too harsh on Conservatives. I never said conservatives NEVER supported Bush. I said (and Reagan said it, too, in a way) that they’re turning vicious on a man who has given them 75% of what they want. And I’ll stand by it! :-)

Which reminds me, Jeanette and pals from Oh, How I Love Jesus have taken on a second blog in preparation for the ’06 elections – I don’t know where they find the energy – so check out Hang Right when you get a chance!