A $2 billion lie

(Mike Thompson)

I posted about the $2 billion Obama trip myth earlier. This is the same lie Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert were poking fun at last night. What does this tell you about the state of our political system, when one side regularly takes a complete fabrication and just publicizes it to death? What does it tell you about the health of the so-called fourth estate when a supposed "news" network can push a complete lie as fact.

Here's Mike Thompson's commentary:

There’s a difference between hyperbole and lying. Political commentators will often engage in hyperbole to make a point. Yet it’s always the truth that’s being exaggerated - or at least that should be the case. As the political right in America and their benefactors have assembled an enormous noise machine via the takeover of the public airwaves, political debate has shifted from exaggerations of the truth to outright fabrications of the truth. The latest example of this is the lie about President Barack Obama’s trip to Asia costing taxpayers $200 million per day.

The story, according to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, originated in India and was based on a quote by an alleged Indian provincial official. Never mind the laughable notion that a low-level bureaucrat in India has the inside scoop on details of the president’s trip that are being kept top secret for security reasons. A media outlet of unknown reliability somewhere in India used an anonymous quote, so it’s gold to conservative wags who've began spreading the false claim that total tab for the president's official trip will be $2 billion . Since then, conservative pundits from Rush Limbaugh to Glenn Beck have picked up the lie and run with it. Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachman of Minnesota regurgitated the lie on Cooper’s show.

Even after the lie had been exposed, conservative pundits simply shifted to spreading cleverly worded, toned-down versions of the lie. These conservative pundits and politicians are smart enough to know they’re lying. Yet they repeat the lie because the objective is to construct a caricature of Obama and then beat down the caricature they’ve constructed. I have no problem with caricatures as long as they’re accurate. However, there’s a reason political cartoonists didn’t depict former President Bill Clinton as the apex of marital fidelity, or depict former President George W. Bush as a having opposed the war in Iraq. It's one thing [to] craft a caricature of someone on the basis of something they've actually said or done; it's another thing to fabricate the truth and then attack someone on the basis of your fabrication.

Here's Anderson Cooper on CNN:



Cooper: "But it turns out the only press in which this story was coming out was an Indian press report."  That's not quite true. I'm sure by "press," Michele Bachmann meant Fox "News."

Note that Cooper doesn't mention Fox at all, and he emphasizes talk radio. Well, these days, Fox is the 800-lb. gorilla in television journalism (loosely speaking). I suspect that CNN is very careful not to antagonize them. But, of course, Fox has been pushing this lie, too, as we saw earlier.

And their viewers will believe it. Fox has far more viewers than CNN, and they believe. Note, too, that Michele Bachmann is one of the biggest loons in Congress, and she was re-elected once again last week. I'm convinced that you just can't be too crazy for these people. (But no one calls her a "moderate," which is the kiss of death in the GOP these days.)

Cooper: "No one really seems to care to check the facts."  But of course not. Most of these people aren't dumb enough to actually believe these outlandish figures, I'm sure. But they use them anyway, for political purposes. What does it matter that it's all made up, all a complete lie? If it works for their political purposes - and it will work - that's all that matters.

The fact is, we've seen this again and again. As Thompson points out, the right-wing noise machine has shifted from exaggeration to outright lies. And so far, there hasn't been any downside. Well, yes, America has suffered plenty of downside, but not right-wing politicians. They're riding high.