Paul Waldman, who I work with at Media Matters, lays the smack down on right-winger John Stossel who claims Media Matters is a “smear” site, yet can’t cite diddly to back it up.
(via)
Compare Paul’s performance to “Democratic Strategist” Sascha Burns who went on O’Reilly this Tuesday night completely unprepared and was eaten alive by Billo and his conservative guest. Progressives – if you’re going to go on tv, know what the hell you are doing or don’t bother going on because you just make the rest of us look bad. (by comparison Kirsten Powers and Laura Schwartz both do excellent jobs punditizing from the left on Fox without resorting to Colmes-style submission)
Lays the smack down? Please. Apparently, he doesn’t even know the definition of ’smear’ as he is trying to equate it with the word ‘true.’ It is very easy to smear somebody by taking comments out of context and using very slick wording to cast them in a bad light. Media Matters is very good at that.
Here’s a perfect example. Media Matters headline:
Barnes reported Bush acknowledgment that bin Laden “not a top priority,” but ignored Bush’s recent emphatic pledges to pursue bin Laden until captured
But that isn’t what Bush said. MM leaves out an important piece of context to that quote. It’s only when you get further down that you see what Bush said was:
Barnes reiterated on the September 14 edition of Fox News Live that Bush said sending U.S. Special Forces into “the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan” to capture bin Laden is “not a top priority use of American resources.”
The two quotes are mutually exclusive when examined in context and MM does this ALL the time.
Ooh, looka here: Jay’s defining the word “smear” down. Careful, Jay, you’re in grave danger of (again) shitting where you eat.
Go back to bed, will you? The grown-ups want to talk.
And do you really want to defend Bush’s record on bin Laden? He DID call OBL “irrelevant.”
I enjoy reading comment that appears to have been written by a 5 year old saying the “grown-ups want to talk.”
Of course, that’s to be expected around here.
Actually, jim I don’t think Bush said he was irrelevant. He doesn’t use big words like that. He said “I don’t spend much time thinking about him”, that I know.
Jay, those two quotes say exactly the same thing.
1. OBL is understood by all to be in the mountains of Pakistan/Afghanistan.
2. The pResident won’t send special forces.
3. There are no other forces seeking bin Laden.
4. There would be no other reason to be in that region other than to apprehend bin Laden..
Sentient people understand that, which leaves you out….
This clip reminds me of one from a year ago or something when Ann Coulter was on the Hannity (and Colmes) show on Fox, and she called Colmes a liar. Not about anything in particular mind you, she just said it as though it were self evident truth. Colmes asked “name one thing Ive lied about” because he was, naturally, affronted, and she couldnt. I mean dammit I can name off the top of my head a few things Ann’s lied about, but she seriously believed that its sufficient to just call someone a liar without pointing out a single, even alleged instance, as Stossel fails to do, resting on the presumption that it will be acceptable to imply “well I dont know a specific case offhand but you do it all the time”. Its like if I called you a murderer, but couldnt be bothered to find a single person I could accuse you of killing even, but said thats alright because “you do it all the time anyway, why should I bother pointing to one single instance”
The two quotes are mutually exclusive when examined in context
Sorry, Jay. I haven’t had my coffee this morning, so I might be a little slow.
I don’t get it. How are those two statements “mutually exclusive”?
Jay, hopefully you aren’t leading with your best material, because there is nothing very revealing here. It sounds more like they have said the same thing twice, which is what you’d expect from a headline and context. Do you have anything else or are you as flat-footed as Stossel on this one.
Why does MSNBC care about a commentator on a competing network anyway?
Olbermann excluded.
Those quotes say the exact same thing, only and idiot would say other– oh, hi Jay.
I see, so only special forces would be able to get to bin Laden? Is that it?
In order for the statements to be EXACTLY THE SAME, one has to believe that ONLY special forces could get in there to get bin Laden. After all, covert operatives in the CIA couldn’t do it right? Operatives within the CIA working with Pakistani forces couldn’t do it right?
But somehow to the twit brigade here,
“bin Laden is not a top priority”
and
“sending U.S. Special Forces into “the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan” to capture bin Laden is “not a top priority use of American resources.”
is EXACTLY the same thing.
Again, you’re all like Ray Babbit minus the math genius.
3. There are no other forces seeking bin Laden.
How do you know?
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured in Pakistan by the Pakistani ISI in conjunction with help from the FBI.
No special forces were involved.
But the statements are EXACTLY the same!
Jay, you’re practicing the same rhetorical cowardice of your hero, Bush. First, you accuse Media Matters of taking Bush out of context.
So Bush saying that sending Special Forces into Pakistan/Afghanistan to get bin Laden isn’t a top priority use of U.S. resources sounds more precise than saying that bin Laden isn’t a top priority. That is self-evident. But who else would the U.S. send after bin Laden, and where else would we send them? Would we send the Coast Guard to Kansas?
When you got called on the dishonesty of that parsing, you moved the goalposts. So now the two ideas aren’t “exactly the same.” As if that has anything to do with your original argument, which was– well, whatever it was.
C’mon, Jay, you’re not dealing with Bush’s base here. If you’re going to try and blow smoke at smarter people, you’re going to need a bigger fire. Personally, I don’t think you’ve got it in you (refer to Jim’s comment about grown-ups).
But who else would the U.S. send after bin Laden, and where else would we send them? Would we send the Coast Guard to Kansas?
Perhaps you should improve your reading comprehension skills instead going with the snark.
As I pointed out, there are several other ways that we can get bin Laden and it doesn’t require the use of special forces. Again (I keep thinking my comments are done in invisible HTML because I am constantly repeating myself. It’s that or you people purposely ignore what is written because it gets in the way), Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured in Pakistan, by Pakistani officials working with the FBI. No special forces.
Therefore, to say that Bush claimed bin Laden “is not a top priority” is nowhere near the same as saying, “using special forces in the mountains of Pakistan to capture bin Laden is not a top priority use of American resources.” It’s purposely misleading.
When you got called on the dishonesty of that parsing, you moved the goalposts. So now the two ideas aren’t “exactly the same.”
Oh please. Sell that shit to the tourists ok? It was your boy Factcheck and Oliver who made the claim the two statements were “exactly the same.” They weren’t even close. The goalposts didn’t have to be moved.
It’s a standard MO for Media Matters. They parse, take comments out of context and often make bold assertions that are ’supported’ with the flimsiest of evidence. It’s pretty pathetic that they engage in the same kind of misinformation they accused the ‘conservative media’ of engaging in.
But what should one expect from David Brock, the grand poobah of lying?
I should have know crazy jay would mislead. Here’s what the MM article REALLY said.
Summary: Fred Barnes reported that President Bush told him that capturing Osama bin Laden is not “a paramount goal of the war on terror.”
Extreme right-wing commentator Fred Barnes quoted:
BARNES: Well, he said, “Look, you can send 100,000 Special Forces” — that’s the figure he used — “to the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan and hunt him down, but he just said that’s not a top priority use of American resources.” His vision of a war on terror is one that involves intelligence to find out from people to get tips to follow them up and break up plots to kill Americans before they occur, as what happened recently in that case of the planes that were to be blown up by terrorists, we think, coming from England. And that’s the top priority. He says, you know, getting Osama bin Laden is just a low priority compared to that.
If crazyjays got a problem with the article he needs to take it up with fauxnews, not MM.
How dare MM report what people really said!
Let’s summarize, shall we?
MM headline: Barnes reported Bush acknowledgment that bin Laden “not a top priority,”…
What Barnes said:
“Look, you can send 100,000 Special Forces” — that’s the figure he used — “to the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan and hunt him down, but he just said that’s not a top priority use of American resources….. [President Bush] says, you know, getting Osama bin Laden is just a low priority compared to that.
Rest of MM headline:
but ignored Bush’s recent emphatic pledges to pursue bin Laden until captured
Bush said:
In his September 11 speech from the Oval Office, apparently the day before the meeting Barnes attended, Bush said: “Osama bin Laden and other terrorists are still in hiding. Our message to them is clear: No matter how long it takes, America will find you , and we will bring you to justice.”
Yea, totally different. Actually, exactly the same.
Incidentally, it really weakens his accusations of misleading people when the EXACT QUOTE IN CONTEXT is located in THE SAME ARTICLE.
Really, haven’t we all had enough of J’s lies and misdirection?
“It’s a standard MO for Media Matters. They parse, take comments out of context…”
By posting the entire statement? But I guess Hannity told you that, so it must be true!
“Therefore, to say that Bush claimed bin Laden “is not a top priority” is … purposely misleading.”
From the lede paragrah of the
article by Barnes to which the Media Matters article referred and linked to:
You’re a fucking idiot, Jay.
Is this the same Jay who spent several days trying to convince us that “had bin Laden cornered but Sandy Berger blew it” is the exact same thing as “never had bin Laden cornered in the first place”?
Hilarious, ain’t it?
“MM leaves out an important piece of context to that quote. It’s only when you get further down that you see what Bush said was:”
Jesus, is your problem is hat Media Matters didn’t put the full quote in the headline?
Because they clearly DID provide the context for the headline both within in the post itself and by linking to Barnes article.
Because Jay, when you say that Media Matters “leaves out an important piece of context to that quote” but then you find that context in the same Media Matters post, plus a link to the original article it was referencing, that sounds like, you know, a smear to me. Idiot.
frame, he probably left this thread for good. We see this time and time again. He gets spanked, leaves the thread, then appears on another thread peddling the same nonsense. You will find him up the blog now peddling the “anthrax scare? Big deal” meme.
We need more trolls here. Jay got way too much attention on this thread. Whatever happened to Frank, Pedro and Ian?
Frank is pursuing other interests Don’t click link after eating.
To repeat, this is the BEST that Jay can come up to denegrate MM and it is a total farce. I have never had my head so far up the arse of a political ideology. What’s it look like up there Jay?
Factcheck, is that really the same Frank??? If so, it explains a lot.
z adura, it’s one and the same. I frankly don’t have that much of an imagination to make something like that up.
Factcheck — thanks for the morning surprise.
Sorry
I don’t know how to make this a link … Frank’s a busy boy.
http://www.blogger.com/profile/2770209
Wow, Frank explains Einstein.
but I don’t get it. Frank’s a tranny? Or he likes trannies? Does that make him teh gay?
I thought he was all about tradintional family values…
Come to think about it, his worship of Condi makes sense now too.
Oh my goodness.