A piece about rampant intellectual dishonesty in the media:
The common theme between the Pelosi hysteria and the dismissive response to the DoJ firings, leaving out a few thousand other examples from the past six years, is aggressive, willful dishonesty, not just from the politicians, which is to be expected, but from ostensibly neutral media figures, and consequently regular people. These issues are simple, and wouldn’t take long to argue out, if news people felt in any way obliged to make sense. For instance, the Pelosi debate would go something like this:
Conservative: Nancy Pelosi wore a headscarf! This is a clear message of submission to Islamic extremists!
Reasonable Interviewer: But Laura Bush, Condoleezza Rice and many others have worn the same garment in similar situations.
Conservative: Oh. Well, still, she went on a diplomatic mission against the will of the president! This clearly violates the centuries-old, never utilized Logan Act! She must be prosecuted!
Reasonable Interviewer: But Newt Gingrich and Dennis Hastert have both done the same thing. In fact, unlike Pelosi, they actively controverted the president’s stated policies during those visits. Besides, several Republicans also visited Syria in the same week as Pelosi.
Conservative: All right, well, then… but Pelosi misrepresented the Israeli Prime Minister! She said Olmert was ready to begin peace talks, but she didn’t relay his insistence that they stop funding terrorists!
Reasonable Interviewer: Actually, that’s not true. Pelosi did predicate that message on that condition, as she and others in her delegation have stated. But the jerk-offs at the Washington Post failed to mention it in their editorial, despite the fact that it was reported in the very same paper on the same day.
Conservative: Oh. Well, never mind then! Sorry to bother you.
Instead, we are incessantly barraged with flatly ignorant and unfair accusations that have already been thoroughly debunked. And as every day passes, it becomes more obvious that this isn’t due to a stunning lack of research. It’s a willful ignorance of basic facts. It’s intellectual dishonesty elevated to an art. It may be helping the Republicans, but, as it is applied to all matters of government, from the trivial to the profoundly serious, it’s destroying the country. You can’t run the world when you won’t allow yourself even to look at it.
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