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Why the 'L' word matters more this time around
Blogs, media outlets and even dirty-tricks specialist Karl Rove have joined the growing effort to tally untruths from the campaign trail
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
September 18, 2008 at 4:17 AM EDT
John McCain was surrounded when the shot was fired, a surprisingly direct blow that left the Republican presidential candidate visibly staggered.
It's not every day a prominent politician is called a liar by the ladies of The View.
Appearing on the morning talk show last week, Mr. McCain was confronted by co-host Joy Behar about two of his most recent campaign ads, both of which have been exposed as making false claims about Democratic candidate Barack Obama.
"Now we know that those two ads are untrue. They're lies," Ms. Behar said, dropping the "L" word, a term not usually made in direct reference to an elected official.
Clearly caught off-guard by the language, Mr. McCain raised his eyebrows and sat back, before managing to respond, "They are not lies."
But it is a word he is going to have to get used to hearing, as the roster of people calling the Republican candidate a liar has ballooned in recent days.
On Monday, the Democratic Party launched a website called Count the Lies (http://www.mccainpedia.org/index.php/Count_the_Lies), which tallies alleged untruths promoted by Mr. McCain and his running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. As of yesterday afternoon, the count was at 56.
Blogs and media outlets have also begun directly addressing questionable campaign claims, and Mr. McCain and his team have been flat-out accused of lying by everyone from The New York Times to Fox News.
Even George W. Bush's former dirty tricks specialist, Karl Rove, has criticized the content of Mr. McCain's ads.
"McCain has gone in some of his ads - similarly gone one step too far," Mr. Rove said over the weekend, "and sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the 100 per cent truth test."
Such direct criticism represents a pronounced change in tone, not only for the current campaign, but for political discourse that has long avoided the word "lie."
Traditionally, politicians accuse each other of misstating the facts, exaggerating or telling an untruth, favouring euphemisms over direct accusations of dishonesty.
So why is everyone suddenly so willing to say Mr. McCain is lying?
"Because even though it's being pointed out that there's false information in some of these ads, they keep saying the same thing over and over again," said Viveca Novak, deputy director of Annenberg Political Fact Check.
Her website, a non-partisan group that checks the veracity of political statements, had 1.7 million visitors last week, up from about 200,000 a week during the 2004 presidential election.
Ms. Novak believes the increase in traffic to the site is largely due to a series of advertisements posted by the McCain campaign during the past week that contain provocative statements, including the allegation that Mr. Obama supported sex education for children in kindergarten and that he compared Ms. Palin to a pig wearing lipstick.
Both are untrue.
"I'm gratified to think that people are actually trying to get the facts," she said. "I don't know if it influences anybody's vote whatsoever, but the interest is a good indicator."
In most political campaigns, Ms. Novak said, some lies are made by each side of the campaign, and are viewed by most observers to largely cancel one another out.
But this time, the volume of misleading statements made by the McCain campaign has prompted outside forces to step in and correct the record.
"Obama hasn't been perfect and he's put out some ads that have misleading information, but when it becomes so heavily one-sided, people have to acknowledge what's going on," Ms. Novak said.
In the past few days, the Republican campaign has been confronted on its repeated claims about Mr. Obama's tax plan. Mr. McCain and his surrogates have said the Democrat would raise taxes for middle-class families, although his platform calls for an increase only for those who earn more than $250,000 a year.
Ms. Palin, too, has been held to account for her public statements.
She has said Alaska is responsible for 20 per cent of the country's domestic supply of energy, while Fact Check puts the number at 3.5 per cent.
The Obama campaign isn't clean either. FactCheck.org takes issue with Obama ads that incorrectly portray Mr. McCain's record on education funding and support for the auto industry.
And people are not just calling BS on the politicians' major talking points.
On his blog, The Daily Dish, Atlantic magazine writer Andrew Sullivan pointed out that Ms. Palin continues to claim that her Teleprompter broke during the Republican National Convention, and that she ad-libbed parts of her speech, a story her own campaign spokesperson has disputed.
"The strangeness of this lie is that it's easily rebutted by the record," wrote Mr. Sullivan.
The Internet age has undoubtedly helped hold politicians more instantly accountable for their statements. The Web allows for claims to be quickly cross-referenced against a historical record or unbiased sources - and sometimes even video.
The video sharing site YouTube proved devastating for Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries when she repeated an anecdote about once arriving in Bosnia under sniper fire. Her account was disputed by several people on the trip, but Ms. Clinton continued relating her version of events until video emerged showing her disembarking the plane with her teenage daughter and being greeted on the tarmac by a young girl with flowers.
So why keep telling lies when it's so easy to reveal the truth?
"They may be called on it, but I think a lot of them think it still works," Ms. Novak said. "And they may be right."
Blogs, media outlets and even dirty-tricks specialist Karl Rove have joined the growing effort to tally untruths from the campaign trail
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
September 18, 2008 at 4:17 AM EDT
John McCain was surrounded when the shot was fired, a surprisingly direct blow that left the Republican presidential candidate visibly staggered.
It's not every day a prominent politician is called a liar by the ladies of The View.
Appearing on the morning talk show last week, Mr. McCain was confronted by co-host Joy Behar about two of his most recent campaign ads, both of which have been exposed as making false claims about Democratic candidate Barack Obama.
"Now we know that those two ads are untrue. They're lies," Ms. Behar said, dropping the "L" word, a term not usually made in direct reference to an elected official.
Clearly caught off-guard by the language, Mr. McCain raised his eyebrows and sat back, before managing to respond, "They are not lies."
But it is a word he is going to have to get used to hearing, as the roster of people calling the Republican candidate a liar has ballooned in recent days.
On Monday, the Democratic Party launched a website called Count the Lies (http://www.mccainpedia.org/index.php/Count_the_Lies), which tallies alleged untruths promoted by Mr. McCain and his running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. As of yesterday afternoon, the count was at 56.
Blogs and media outlets have also begun directly addressing questionable campaign claims, and Mr. McCain and his team have been flat-out accused of lying by everyone from The New York Times to Fox News.
Even George W. Bush's former dirty tricks specialist, Karl Rove, has criticized the content of Mr. McCain's ads.
"McCain has gone in some of his ads - similarly gone one step too far," Mr. Rove said over the weekend, "and sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the 100 per cent truth test."
Such direct criticism represents a pronounced change in tone, not only for the current campaign, but for political discourse that has long avoided the word "lie."
Traditionally, politicians accuse each other of misstating the facts, exaggerating or telling an untruth, favouring euphemisms over direct accusations of dishonesty.
So why is everyone suddenly so willing to say Mr. McCain is lying?
"Because even though it's being pointed out that there's false information in some of these ads, they keep saying the same thing over and over again," said Viveca Novak, deputy director of Annenberg Political Fact Check.
Her website, a non-partisan group that checks the veracity of political statements, had 1.7 million visitors last week, up from about 200,000 a week during the 2004 presidential election.
Ms. Novak believes the increase in traffic to the site is largely due to a series of advertisements posted by the McCain campaign during the past week that contain provocative statements, including the allegation that Mr. Obama supported sex education for children in kindergarten and that he compared Ms. Palin to a pig wearing lipstick.
Both are untrue.
"I'm gratified to think that people are actually trying to get the facts," she said. "I don't know if it influences anybody's vote whatsoever, but the interest is a good indicator."
In most political campaigns, Ms. Novak said, some lies are made by each side of the campaign, and are viewed by most observers to largely cancel one another out.
But this time, the volume of misleading statements made by the McCain campaign has prompted outside forces to step in and correct the record.
"Obama hasn't been perfect and he's put out some ads that have misleading information, but when it becomes so heavily one-sided, people have to acknowledge what's going on," Ms. Novak said.
In the past few days, the Republican campaign has been confronted on its repeated claims about Mr. Obama's tax plan. Mr. McCain and his surrogates have said the Democrat would raise taxes for middle-class families, although his platform calls for an increase only for those who earn more than $250,000 a year.
Ms. Palin, too, has been held to account for her public statements.
She has said Alaska is responsible for 20 per cent of the country's domestic supply of energy, while Fact Check puts the number at 3.5 per cent.
The Obama campaign isn't clean either. FactCheck.org takes issue with Obama ads that incorrectly portray Mr. McCain's record on education funding and support for the auto industry.
And people are not just calling BS on the politicians' major talking points.
On his blog, The Daily Dish, Atlantic magazine writer Andrew Sullivan pointed out that Ms. Palin continues to claim that her Teleprompter broke during the Republican National Convention, and that she ad-libbed parts of her speech, a story her own campaign spokesperson has disputed.
"The strangeness of this lie is that it's easily rebutted by the record," wrote Mr. Sullivan.
The Internet age has undoubtedly helped hold politicians more instantly accountable for their statements. The Web allows for claims to be quickly cross-referenced against a historical record or unbiased sources - and sometimes even video.
The video sharing site YouTube proved devastating for Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries when she repeated an anecdote about once arriving in Bosnia under sniper fire. Her account was disputed by several people on the trip, but Ms. Clinton continued relating her version of events until video emerged showing her disembarking the plane with her teenage daughter and being greeted on the tarmac by a young girl with flowers.
So why keep telling lies when it's so easy to reveal the truth?
"They may be called on it, but I think a lot of them think it still works," Ms. Novak said. "And they may be right."
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