Time Liar Jay Carney: Michelle "Whitey" Rumor Circulated By... (Wait for It...) Conservative Bloggers

I'd normally say this demonstrates how clueless the MSM is, but here there is no other possible explanation except a deliberate lie. Everyone who has heard the rumor knows precisely where it came from, and everyone knows that that is hyperliberal Hillary supporter Larry Johnson, and everyone further knows that the conservative blogosphere has (as far as I know, though of course I don't read every blog) debunked the rumor and stated, with 99% confidence, it's flat-out false.

We couldn't say, with Andrea Mitchell here, that it's 100% not true and we know that for a fact, for the simple reason one can't prove a negative, one can only say how unlikely the positive is. Andrea trumps us, of course, by testifying to facts of which she knows not. I guess we should be rapped for not claiming, as she does, that we know based upon personal information it is definitely false.

There are undoubtedly some conservative bloggers who pushed this as true. However, most said it wasn't true, pretty emphatically, considering, again, it's beyond our actual ability to say it's untrue with personal eyewitness authority.

But even allowing for the conservative bloggers who did suggest it's true, how come Larry Johnson's seminal role -- he is the first and most zealous peddler of the claim; he's the one whom everyone, including those in the MSM, got the rumor from in the first plalce -- is so conveniently overlooked in Jay Carney's precis?

If he says he didn't know that Larry Johnson is the first, best, and last proponent of this rumor, then I say he's a goddamned deliberate liar.

And if he says he didn't know that conservatives greeted the rumor, in the main, with skepticism verging on dismissiveness, I say he's a goddamned deliberate liar again.

He should retract and confess his deliberate lie or be fired. A reporter gets away with a lot of shading and bias, but he is not allowed to report "facts" he knows with 100% certainty are 100% demonstrably false.

Liberals like to claim to be nuanced and that their greatest failing is their overemphasis on fairness and integrity, but of course that's horseshit. The simplest, most idiotic, most false claim to make here is that conserevative bloggers pushed the rumor -- a simplistic line that has the virtue of fitting well with The Narrative and not injecting doubt or complexity into the storyline: Conservatives can't be trusted, conservatives push false rumors, conservatives engage in deception character assassination in order to advance their dubious cause -- all these things are a given -- so of course it is conservatives behind this rumor.

Nice and simple. Not nuanced, of course, because the "nuance" here -- it was actually pushed by a hyperliberal rabid Hillary supporter -- would complicate the nice, neat storyline.

It's also completely false, of course. But again, the neatness and simplicity (and political usefulness) of Jay Carney's lie is more important than the messy and inconvenient truth of the matter.

So he just deliberately lied to an audience of millions. Wait, this seems to be MSNBC. He deliberately lied to an audience of several dozen thousands.

Because he's so concerned about accuracy, fairness, and nuance, you understand.

posted by Ace at 04:39 PM

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