Rachel Maddow, ACORN, and Fake News

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"... things are not always as partisan zealots portray them through highly selective editing of reality." That's a direct quote from the California Office of the Attorney General, speaking about the notorious ACORN videos. And it's the focus of this brief video clip from Rachel Maddow on MSNBC.

It's less than 9 minutes long, but Maddow is absolutely superb here. She condemns the current onslaught of fake news, the "fake outrage," and "the unmooring of politics from facts." She discusses not just the edited, and very misleading, ACORN videos, but that "Climategate" theft of emails from climatologists - both shamefully spun and pushed like crazy by Fox News for political advantage,... and both later discredited.

"Now which did you hear more about?" Maddow is absolutely right. How many people heard of the original ACORN scandal - the manufactured outrage, with politicians jumping on the bandwagon in every state - but will never hear that it was mostly fake? There were investigations in several states, after all. But the authorities discovered that the video had simply been edited to make ACORN look bad. (That's not to say that a few ACORN staffers didn't make inappropriate comments, but the reality was far different than how it had been portrayed by their political opponents.)

And that so-called "Climategate"? How many people heard Fox News, and other right-wing operatives and politicians, pushing it as the nail in the coffin of global warming? Far more than will ever hear about the resulting investigation, I'll bet. Because it did not, in any way, discredit man-made climate change. Despite a few poorly-worded emails (carelessly written, because they were never intended for publication), the data and the scientific consensus are still sound.

Sadly, as Maddow says, "There's more bang for the political buck to make stuff up like this than to try to debate real problems in the real world." Well, sure. That's why we ended up talking about "death panels," of all the crazy claims, with the health care reform bill. And that's why our political system is nearly dysfunctional at a time when we need it the most.

Well, it's shameful and it's embarrassing that we let Fox "News" and pretty much the entire Republican Party get away with stuff like this. Only a handful of conservatives have been brave enough and honest enough to speak out against this lunacy. But I'm glad those of us who side with reality have Rachel Maddow on our side.