Last week, Jon Stewart showed a little clip of Bill O'Reilly actually debunking conservative propaganda designed to delegitimize President Obama. This is definitely a good thing. One issue that occassionally is fretted about amongst liberals and progressives is how to get information to people who only live within the FoxNews closed loop.
Admittedly, I should acknowledge that many conservatives presumably share the same consternation about those who they say only get their news from the "liberal media". I would, of course, generally call bullshit on that and argue that we're getting into the false equivalency debate all over again. But that is sooo Fall 2010! and this post has a different boogeyman than Fox News.
So it was a Free Trial Weekend for HBO on DirecTv this weekend. I took advantage of the opportunity to watch Real Time With Bill Maher. The subject came up of Jon Kyl lying about Planned Parenthood on the floor of the Senate. Bill seemed to argue that it was such an egregious and blatant lie that it basically took the cake as the worst of the worst of all political lies.
Ed Schultz, the firey MSBNC host, was all too eager to agree and he claimed that the only thing that might compare was Sarah Palin saying she "could see Russia from her backyard". A crowd-pleasing line to be sure.
The problem is that Sarah Palin never actually said such a thing! Only Tina Fey said that.
Sarah Palin merely said that one could see Russia from land in Alaska... which is 100% true. It is, of course, a comment worthy of parody because of the implication that it somehow gave her foreign policy credentials. However, it was a not a lie and Ed Schultz deserves to be called out for being the actual liar in this instance.
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