On Friday, Rachel Maddow had a segment that ended with a powerful indictment of the rightwing politics of lying--and by implication the media's complicity in assisting them:
This is arguably the central point that Versailles' false "balance" schema dogmatically denies: the right overwhelming depends on fake arguments based on faked facts. While any given individual may not realize it, and thus technically not be a liar, the totality of political conservatism today depends upon willfully not knowing the truth. They lie collectively in order to preserve the fiction that they are not lying individually.
And the false "balance" schema demands that the media ignore what is going on, because telling the truth would mean calling conservatives pathological liars. Which is why the media is heavily biased toward conservatives: it treats virtually every outlandish claim they make as if it were credible, as if conservatives had never lied before, when in fact they lie constantly.
The challenge is not to find conservatives lies. The challenge is to find conservatives telling the truth about anything at all that has major political significance. They flat out just can't seem to do it. And the M$M is scared shitless to deal with the fact.
STATE BLOGS
