We live in a world where spin is king. Whoever controls the message controls the debate. It's one of the dictums of life whether it be in your relationships at work, with friends, lovers, family or in the world of politics.
As much as I knock conservatives in general and Republicans in particular on this site, I have to give it up to them, they are masters at message crafting and distribution. The dissemination of concise talking points on a variety of topics from national to local parties and activists is achieved in machine-like precision and is the envy of partisans and pundits alike.
Or rather was, until the message system imploded following their losses in the 2006 and 2008 elections as well as the mountain of reliable, verifiable information that directly refuted their original claims. The machine is now sputtering along, still producing talking points that are repeated endlessly on the floor of Congress, Sunday morning talk shows, Fox News, and AM talk radio but don't have nearly the results they once had.
However, now that the Republican party is talking only to their diminishing base, the darker, more sinister rumors have started flourishing and getting regurgitated from the halls of power to the coffee shops. Below are the top 5 myths being circulated by the Republicans and the right-wing messaging machine.
1. Obama was born in Kenya and cannot legally hold the office of President
This is the big one of the moment and has been repeated and emailed within the conservative circle of influence for months. It was even cited as a reason for rebellion by James von Brunn, who shot up the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. a few weeks ago, killing a guard (Stephen Johns) in the process.
The rumor started not long into Obama's 2008 stretch of the campaign when it became clear that he would triumph over Clinton in the Democratic primaries. It was debunked a few weeks later when the campaign released the certificate to independent experts to examine as well as a scanned copy to the Internet.
The experts confirmed the authenticity of the certificate while those who relied solely on the Internet version stated that it was a fake, noting that there wasn't a seal on the copy (which only faintly showed up on the scanned version since Hawaii at the time placed their seal on the back of such documents).
This has led to a fringe movement within conservative circles (who call themselves "birthers") who claim Obama never released the long form of his birth certificate and can therefore not be eligible to hold the office. Some have even tried to sue their way into federal court over the issue, only to be instantly rebuffed (one such case in Missouri is preparing to file their claim in early July).
2. Republicans understand the average joe / Democrats are elitists
Generally considered a meme that raises its head every once in a while on Fox, the idea of the "Volvo-driving latte liberal", too concerned with their own petty needs to be concerned about those of the regular joe is an older one but one that rears its head every once in a while.
Its most recent and most popular refutation came just recently in the form of a tweet from Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) when he typed "Iranian twitter activity similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House". With that one tweet, Hoekstra started a micro-movement on the Internet that takes mundane events and inflates them to outrageous proportions.
Some of my favorites from the site Hoekstraisameme are: "I saw some scantily clad teenagers form a pyramid. It was just like being in Abu Ghraib", or "I just lost a game of Jenga. Now I know what it was like to be there at 9/11", or "My toilet just overflowed a little. Now I know how the Indonesian Tsunami victims felt."
3. Obama is a socialist
In the words of Inigo Montoya, "I do not think that word means what you think it does". Obama is not a socialist. He's a moderate Democrat who leans left on a variety of social issues. Nothing in his speeches, policy proposals, or goals of his Presidency espouse wanting to destroy capitalism or move production or distribution of goods to the ownership of the community. What he does want to do is eliminate the "casino capitalism" that awards bonuses to executives who take unnecessary risks or commit outright fraud to line their own pockets. If that's socialism, then sign me up.
4. Mainstream media is biased towards a liberal point of view
This was started almost 30 years ago by conservatives as they saw their influence in public debate begin to diminish following the Nixon scandal and Vietnam and didn't really catch steam under the Reagan Revolution in the 1980s. Sadly, this is also a lie. Cable news outlets may have anchors that lean one way or another on the political spectrum, but the companies themselves are part of large transnational corporations that are interested in profit and keeping their shareholders happy.
It's hard to do that when your employees are muckraking greedy politicians and companies that can help your bottom line. Now I'm not saying they exert overt editorial control (unless it's Fox News, who act just like Robert Greenwald's excellent documentary Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism), but it's made clear through career advancements and story assignments how and what stories get covered.
Media Matters for America conducted a study concerning the concentration of conservative versus progressive guests espousing certain ideological beliefs who appear on their weekly panel segments. They discovered it tilted heavily in favor of conservative ideology. On NBC's Meet the Press it was 21% to 14%. On ABC's This Week it was 35% to 5% and on CBS's Face the Nation it was 20% to 0%.
5. Republicans are the moral leaders of this country
As I'm typing this, I'm watching the press conference of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford admit to the world that his hiking trip to the Appalachian Mountains was really a trip to Argentina to see his lover during his two week separation from his wife so they can try and put their marriage back together again.
This is about a week after Nevada Senator John Ensign admitted to an affair with the wife of a member of his staff, which was a couple of years after Larry Craig's conviction of soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom, which was a year and a half after Louisiana Senator David Vitter got into some trouble for screwing hookers instead of his wife, approximately two and a half years after the Rep. Mark Foley scandal in which he sought sex with underage male pages and about three years after conservative icon Rush Limbaugh was arrested for illegal drug use.
Can we please put these canards to bed rest now?
User Comments / Add a Comment »
mardod makes a joke "resistance is futile-you will all be assimilated" funny thats exactly what obama has planned, of course unless you are the elite, you will be a peasant, and all that you do and say will be censored- hey take your head out of your ass there mardod, and get ready for the big obama screwing-all illegal aliens will be covered under his health care plan-at a cost of 4 trillion dollars-when there are 15 million people out of work and at a personal cost of about $[link deleted] i know you probably can't count that high, but if you have trouble caculating let em know i can help!
Added: 120 days ago by stilllogic
obama still has not produced -cert, look at the wealth of the dems as compared to repubs, obama is the defintion of socialist, fox vs the rest give me a break, and dems lack any morals so all in all the dems are destroyibg our coubtry ands we must resist them
Added: 132 days ago by jc31971
kontraband has gone partisan and joined obama's spin doctor team. we're all doomed.
Added: 142 days ago by alexisonfire04
resistance is futile. you will be assimilated.
Added: 141 days ago by mardod
i really don't know how you can say the media is generally fair. i'll use two examples: richard nixon and bill clinton.
if you ask athe average person about nixon, probably the only thing they will be able to tell you is the watergate scandal. they won't know that he got the us out of vietnam, abolished the gold standard, was the first president to initiate talks with china and eased tension with the soviet union. his tenure as president was a huge success, but i guarantee you most people think he was terrible for the us.
bill clinton on the other hand, is not thought of in the same light as nixon. everyone knows the us economy in the 90's was great and they know that bill clinton was the president. they also know about the monica lewinsky scandal, but don't think it's that big of a deal even though clinton knowingly lied to the american people and to congress.
so here we have two good presidents of opposing parties that both acted unethically and illegally. one is scorned and one is celebrated. the reason: media portrayal.
Added: 142 days ago by jones2tc
bill is famous for getting his junk juiced by an intern. of course people like him.
Added: 138 days ago by andopolis
i agree with all of them but lets have a blog of the myths dem are tring to push. they have there far share also. i don't follow this stuff that closly so i can't give examples. number 5 is the best. there is no way that they could fake a birth certificate or what ever they say they have [link deleted] that was true the republicans would have to be in on it too. and depending on where you go you will get different media point of views, in the south it is all down with obama on the radio. he's been in office 6 months, at least he is tring to fix things.
Added: 142 days ago by daveh1975
you know, i did think about writing one, but one of the big differences between the two parties is that democrats suck at selling ideas. it's one of their most glaring problems in the media age. they're all about the policy wonk stuff, but inadequate when it comes down to consolidating it into easy-to-digest media sound bites. look at kerry's presidential run in 2004 and how often he stumbled trying to explain his economic polices compared to someone like clinton who was much more media savvy.
Added: 142 days ago by mardod
there is still not one
Added: 132 days ago by jc31971
haha i can't believe this is still the featured article. i still haven't seen a single compelling rebuttal - just a lot of name calling.
Added: 143 days ago by chen47
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