1115.org

Jonathan Weisman of the Washington Post has a strange little front-page article today in which he skirts around the issue of what many others are calling the McCain campaign’s repeated lies.

The opening paragraph reads:

From the moment Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin declared that she had opposed the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere,” critics, the news media and nonpartisan fact checkers have called it a fabrication or, at best, a half-truth. But yesterday in Lebanon, Ohio, and again in Lancaster, Pa., she crossed that bridge again.

Note how Weisman very carefully does not himself call Palin’s Bridge to Nowhere claim a fabrication, or even a half-truth. He merely records that the news media and nonpartisan fact checkers have called it those things. For Weisman is merely a journalist. And how is a journalist to know whether something is a truth or a lie? Journalists apparently (as distinct from the news media?) do not dabble in truths or facts. Journalists, as everyone knows by now, are not nonpartisan fact checkers. And as far as Weisman is concerned, nor should they ever strive to be.

Although, at one point Weisman comes dangerously close to letting himself down. In fact, he may even have earned himself a written reprimand from the Journalist Thought Police:

Palin and John McCain, the GOP presidential nominee, have been more aggressive in recent days in repeating what their opponents say are outright lies. Almost every day, for instance, McCain says rival Barack Obama would raise everyone’s taxes, even though the Democrat’s tax plan exempts families that earn less than $250,000.

Fed up, the Obama campaign broke a taboo on Monday and used the “L-word” of politics to say that the McCain campaign was lying about the Bridge to Nowhere.

He did get in that “what their opponents say are outright lies”. However, the next sentence baldly labels a McCain claim as false with nary a disclaimer or a third-party ascription. Of course, Weisman would never commit the grave journalistic impropriety of using the L-word himself, something that will surely count in his favor.

And it was probably to make up for that small lapse that Weisman decided — in an article about truths and lies in politics — to throw in a few paragraphs to thoroughly debase the meaning of the word “truth” in this context:

John Feehery, a Republican strategist, said the campaign is entering a stage in which skirmishes over the facts are less important than the dominant themes that are forming voters’ opinions of the candidates.

“The more the New York Times and The Washington Post go after Sarah Palin, the better off she is, because there’s a bigger truth out there and the bigger truths are she’s new, she’s popular in Alaska and she is an insurgent,” Feehery said. “As long as those are out there, these little facts don’t really matter.”

For now, there appears to be little political reason to back down. A Washington Post-ABC News poll taken Sept. 5 to Sept. 7 found that 51 percent of voters think Obama would raise their taxes, even though his plan would actually cut taxes for the overwhelming majority of Americans. Obama has proposed eliminating income taxes on seniors making less than $50,000 a year, but 41 percent of those seniors say their income taxes would go up in an Obama administration.

So truths are not actually facts. Truths are what people believe. And what people believe is a bigger truth than the facts that may happen to be true. Poor irrelevant pesky facts, who cares about them?

And how can the McCain campaign be lying? Even if they misrepresent the facts, the truths are on their side.

What trumps everything though is the fact (okay, so all facts are not poor or irrelevant or pesky; some are even quasi-truths) that a majority of voters subscribe to truths that are not true. And in a democracy, the voters are always right.

(The second half of Weisman’s article is even more bizarre than the first. As best as I can make out, he seems to be arguing that the McCain-Palin campaign’s orchestrated lies about their records and about Obama are somehow absolved by the “slew of distortions that have spread through e-mail and on the Internet” about Palin.)

***Update, 8:43 am ***

Maybe it’s impolite for journalists to fact-check politicians, but dirty rotten scoundrel bloggers delight in fact-checking everyone—politicians, journalists, other bloggers. (This has to do with some no doubt thoroughly old-fashioned notion of keeping everyone honest.)

Weisman offered this little piece of fair-and-balanced-ery to propagate the truth that Obama is as bad as McCain:

A McCain quote Obama has often used — that the economy is fundamentally sound — is months old. Since he said that, McCain has said almost daily that the economy is struggling.

Unless Weisman has privately redefined months to mean weeks (and just hasn’t got around to sharing that with us yet), he’s just plain wrong:

First, the McCain quote isn’t “months old”; McCain told Laura Ingraham, “I still believe the fundamentals of our economy are strong” three weeks ago today. So why is it, exactly, that Weisman believes it’s unfair for the Obama campaign to mention it?

Of course, to Weisman, being plumb wrong on the facts is probably no disgrace. Not if he still manages to get the truths right.