Liar liar pants on fire
It’s a trend, thank heavens. See this AlterNet article by David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation, on the subject of his new book, The lies of George W. Bush; Mastering the Politics of Deception. Included are nifty links to Corn’s site,and a list of the top ten lies; as well as to MoveOn.org‘s own site about Bush lies, www.misleader.org; and George Soros’s site, www.wedeservethetruth.com. Despite all this patent dishonesty on the part of the Bush Administration, you still hear “folks” saying stupid things such as, “George Bush is the most honest president I’ve ever seen.” (This in an NPR report last week sometime….)
I like the “customers who bought this book also bought” list that pops up when you click on the Amazon link for Corn’s book:
Al Franken of course, with Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right; followed by Joe Conason’s Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth. Next up: Molly Ivins’s Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush’s America; Paul Krugman’s The Great Unravelling: Losing Our Way in the New Century; and finally Eric Alterman’s What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News.
It’s a trend. Hope it has significant consequences. Seat getting hot yet, W.?
I came out of a discussion tonight which ended a conservative trying to make a plebescite on whether I was intolerant because I had researched the author’s background and revealed a few unsavory details about his past. Plus I had a better command of history on the topic (Mexican immigration in California) than either the author or the other discussants. “You just don’t like this guy so we can dismiss your opinion,” said the lawyer, playing to the crowd. I pointed out that throughout the evening he kept interrupting me and that he had been belittling me. “No! I never did that!”
This is what you are dealing with, Yule.
Comment by Joel — September 19, 2003 #
I know what you mean, Joel. Maybe the problem with many people who claim they’re not lying is that they’re still ditchrats. They have to deny the existence of rupture or pain in their lives, and that’s why they can construct these fabrications and totally believe in them, too. “I had a lovely childhood and George W.’s a saint and I’ll be so happy to see Mother and Father up in heaven,” and on and on, ad nauseum. It’s Authoritarian Personality Disorder, which, if it’s not in the textbooks, should be. (PS: son is doing a “First Nations Studies” course, and the material re. contact and especially conversion is so chilling that I’m going to go off the rant-o-meter if I don’t stop right now…: these people who run New Tribes Misssions and the people who ran Canada’s Residential Schools for aboriginal children are of similar cloth: “my way or no way,” authoritarian to the end, and deeply afraid that if they change their ways, their own psyches will come crashing down on them. Grrr!)
Comment by Yule Heibel — September 19, 2003 #