{"id":3067,"date":"2004-09-25T15:24:32","date_gmt":"2004-09-25T22:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=3067"},"modified":"2004-09-25T15:24:32","modified_gmt":"2004-09-25T22:24:32","slug":"tell-me-lies-tell-me-sweet-little-lies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=3067","title":{"rendered":"Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reacting to this<\/a> ludicrously titled AP story (“Bush Twists Kerry’s Words on Iraq”), a certain<\/a> Britney Spears aficionado<\/i> surfaces from his Fruity Pebbles long enough to type, “George Bush Is A LIAR.  This man is pathological.  To date, Senator Kerry has said that Bush ‘misled’, ‘deceived’, etc. Sometime soon, Senator, you’re going to have to say it: your opponent is a liar.”\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd what is this big lie that prompted a certain collector of Beyonce action figures (and accessories) to rend his cloak?  Why, this:<\/p>\n

\n

[Bush] stated flatly that Kerry had said earlier in the week “he would prefer the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein to the situation in Iraq today.” The line drew gasps of surprise from Bush’s audience in a Racine, Wis., park. “I just strongly disagree,” the president said.\n<\/p>\n

\nBut Kerry never said that. In a speech at New York University on Monday, he called Saddam “a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell.” He added, “The satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nLeaving aside a certain YooHoo lover’s decision to exclude the line immediately preceding the excerpt (“It was not unlike the spin that Kerry and his forces sometimes place on Bush’s words.”), let me suggest that Bush’s statement is not a “lie” (and that Bush is not “A LIAR”), but that it is in fact a reasonable interpretation of—and extrapolation from—Kerry’s current position on Iraq: that the longstanding US policy of containment worked; that the Senator would not have enforced with military action the UN Security Council resolutions Hussein flouted (before he would <\/i>have enforced them; but that position is, like, sooo<\/i> two weeks ago); and that America is less safe now<\/i> than it was when Saddam Hussein was in power (and would a certain fan of Clinton Portis argue that Kerry does not <\/i>”prefer” America be more <\/i>safe?  And does it not follow that if America was safer before Saddam was toppled, then America would be safer with Saddam in power?—or, as President Bush put it, that Senator Kerry “would prefer the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein to the situation in Iraq today”?)\n<\/p>\n

\nThe point is, this endless game of semantic gotcha is tiresome. Listen:  anyone who can’t figure out what Bush meant is too hermeneutically challenged to be commenting on serious matters. And those who can<\/i> figure it out—but who choose instead to pounce on stump rhetoric not first vetted by a lawyer and a professor of linguistics—are intentionally disingenuous, which is far worse an offense.\n<\/p>\n

\nI know it’s tough to find things to blog on everyday, Oliver, but come on<\/i>:  Didn’t Jessica Alba have something new pierced this week?\n<\/p>\n

\n****
\n
\nupdate<\/i><\/b>:  cowed by the organized attack muscle of the RNC-controlled right side of the blogosphere (which is not to be confused with the fiercely non-partisan left side<\/a>, ethically our superior, yet powerless against the right’s orchestrated lies), the AP has changed the story title.  The latest title reads, “Bush, Kerry Twisting Each Other’s Words.” Guess they’re going for that whole “cycle of violence” vibe (h\/t SVJ<\/a>)\n<\/p>\n

\n****
\n
\nupdate 2<\/i>:<\/b> Oliver responds to my argument by noting that I crave attention (which is true, though I’d prefer if it came from someone a little less likely to eat me with gravy and slaw and a half-dozen biscuits).  He then makes the point that, “Dear Leader didn’t say anything resembling ‘Senator Kerry’s words would have us believe’ (not that the sorry excuse for a President could get such a complex sentence out), but blatantly lied <\/i>and blatantly claimed that Kerry said<\/b>: ‘he would prefer the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein to the situation in Iraq today’ [at which point, we know from the AP story, the conservative troglodytes in the audience dropped their Bibles and audibly gasped, so sure surprised were they that the good Senator would say such a thing directly<\/i>! – ed<\/i>.] Look. Black is black and white is white, and George W. Bush is a heck of a liar, and Goldstein’s a hell of an idiot apologist. John Kerry never said that. He just didn’t.”\n<\/p>\n

\nOliver then presents an example which, not surprisingly, misses the entire point of my post.\n<\/p>\n

\nBottom line:  in Oliver’s world, assembling on-the-record assertions and using them to draw a conclusion is an unfair representation of the assertions as they existed at the time of their initial pristine utterance.  In Oliver’s world, construing is lying.  Paraphrasing is prevarication.  Distilling is devious.  And Cheez Doodles™ are a food group. \n<\/p>\n

\n****
\n
\nupdate 3<\/i><\/b>:  More here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here <\/a>(h\/t<\/a> LaShawn Barber)\n<\/p>\n

\n****
\n
\nupdate 4<\/i><\/b>:  Of the AP’s change of headline, Willis writes, “Jeez. And now the AP has been bullied—yet again—into retitling their headlines. It’s now ‘Bush, Kerry Twisting Each Other’s Words’. What ‘liberal’ media was that again? Please”— not far from what I suggested in update 1 would be the likely Willisian response (h\/t<\/a> MM).  Chalk it up to predictability (rather than some extraordinarily prescience on my part).\n<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reacting to this ludicrously titled AP story (“Bush Twists Kerry’s Words on Iraq”), a certain Britney Spears aficionado surfaces from his Fruity Pebbles long enough to type, “George Bush Is A LIAR.  This man is pathological.  To date, Senator Kerry has said that Bush ‘misled’, ‘deceived’, etc. Sometime soon, Senator, you’re going to have to say it: your opponent is a liar.” And what is this big lie that prompted<\/p>\n

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