Based on news reports we're all seeing, hearing, and reading, there is an epic amount of hand-wringing going on in every media office, cubicle, and cubbyhole.
It's especially impressive that so many intricate, flailing hand motions can be maintained, all while your feet and legs are dancing as fast as they possible can, all around not saying what you mean.
You see, Paul Ryan has been using the English language again. As usual, he is not interested in using that language to shed any light on plans and facts, but on maiming and hiding them as best he can.
Meanwhile, news anchors, writers, and editors -- and everyone else who finds him- or herself in the clutches of mainstream media employment -- is scanning and thumbing through every possible Thesaurus that can be unearthed and brought to bear on a wholly vexing question:
What else can we call someone for stretching things, without using that awful "L" word?
This misplaced media fear implies a lack of fairness, they no doubt think, and introduces the presence of editorial bias -- not that bias wasn't introduced via audience demographic analyses and news-approach shaping to aid ad sales, along with the sheer subjective nature of human beings, tossed around through life as we are by our senses first and our brains last.
In the fight to find and know truth, we are surrounded by another fallacy, that all thoughts and facts are created equal, as we say. They are not. By way of grisly example: Being against the random killing of school-aged children for sport, as a policy plank, in no way requires the media to scramble, locate, and air the views of a crazed, pro-slaughter candidate.
In spite of all we have heard and come to believe as honest or polite service to the truth, some eventualities, conditions, and statements in life boil down to good or bad, desirable or not, inspiring or depressing, helpful or unhelpful, and truth or lies.
That Paul Ryan is in the liar's limelight once again is not to say Willard Romney, and the entire campaign, are strangers to lies.
It is simply Paul's turn to tag up with his team member, enter the ring, and see how much he can get away with before the referee demands Paul stops slugging the truth over the head with a metal folding chair, or checks him for hidden objects with which to cripple and injure the truth.
The hidden object in this political wrestling match is in this team's plans for America and its people -- plans which are in plain sight all the time: Avoid the truth at all costs, especially in close -- the truth is strong and can do us some real damage. If you can't avoid it, at least get in some good shots, and hurt it as badly as you can, while we go for the fixed count.
So far, news luminaries have employed the following sporting dodges in their Constitutional roles as referees: truth-stretching, errors in fact, inaccuracies (both regular and glaring), slack[ness] with the facts, incorrect information, mistaken comments, wrong (or poor) choice of words, departure from majority view, misleading elements, unclear phrasing, various inconsistencies, uncertain meanings, misspoken statements, factual shortcuts, and on and on.
In time, we may even get to hear, "played fast and loose with the truth." I can hardly wait. However, "falsehoods" was a term that I heard used once, one dangerously close to the truth. What could the mainstream media have been thinking? How did that accuracy slip through? Heads will roll!
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Hang on a sec. Wasn't that a Republican who shouted out "You lie!" to a standing President of the United States of America, during a joint address to Congress, in the middle of that address, thereby interrupting his Commander in Chief? Why, yes it was. Imagine that.
This shows Republicans know the word, they simply have no idea what it means.
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If everyone's forgotten, from under-use or from over-exposure to Republican con artists -- and unthinkably rude, crude, and ignorant people named Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) -- here are some standard dictionary definitions to aid in our discussion:
- Lie: To make a statement that one knows is false, especially with intent to deceive; to makes such statements habitually; to give a false impression or deceive one.
- Liar: A person who tells lies.
These are perfectly valid words and descriptions available for use when the facts fit (pay attention here, Joe Wilson). Neither word is on the infamous list of words banned by the FCC from use on the public airwaves. (Far worse horrors are being done to the public airwaves than the use of some coarse language, but that topic's for another day.)
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These are the things that our media stars (there are so few fact-based reporters left, after all, if you had not noticed) and our media opinionators are agonizing over -- which of the clever, oblique, kindly, concealing, forgiving, and non-feather-ruffling way to tell it as it really is:
Willard Romney is a liar. Paul Ryan is a liar. Republicans are telling lies and so, Republicans are liars. Republicans are relying on lies -- along with those good old GOP standbys, fears and racism -- to get out the vote, and carry the day come election time.
It is what you do when you have nothing to offer. Nothing at all -- less than nothing -- to offer.
Lies are handy for times when you are dead wrong, but would prefer to be right. Lying makes one's version of reality sound momentarily right and temporarily correct.
And now: Enter our intrepid, snarling, mainstream media gatekeepers to truth and watchdogs of America's freedoms...
Behold, how they have resorted to such bland niceties in their mainstream media reports, like rating statements liars make with cutesy expressions, like "Pants on Fire," or in terms of the number of "Pinocchios" any lie has achieved.
Isn't that nice, that we're all being just so darned nice, in this all-out, take-no-prisoners war to get at -- and finally get down to -- the truth?
Freedom of the Press: Nothing like putting it all on the line for all of the People, and all of the country, all of the time.