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 »
as i've indicated in several replies now, mmfa was the only ideological site i used as a source. i don't see your point of reading the description of the site as evidence that the specific info i quoted was false or inaccurate. as for politifact, they won the 2008 pulitzer prize for newspaper reporting after calling liberals, conservatives, democrats, and republicans to the mat for providing false or misleading information to the press or the american people directly. they're about as non-partisan as you can get. your comment that they and [link deleted] are somehow compromised due to their association to annenberg is simply lazy reasoning. the wsj piece you quoted was from the editorial board, rather than the news division and who has long been supportive of republican and neoconservative ideology and not too likely to take an objective view of anyone who fact checks them. again, i ask you, what specific evidence do you have that anything in the piece is wrong?
Added: 143 days ago by mardod
go to the forum/general comments about kontraband/republican myths. i posted this there. you should see the crap that has come in response thus far.
when this new president obama rears his ugly head and reveals his hidden agenda to the world you will be hiding in a hole.
1.) he is a socialist, just read some of his writings and who he has revered as politically worthy. he came from a community development background promoting social programs using legal influence backed by chicago thugs.
2.) what is the big deal in providing an actual birth certificate and not an official certificate stating that there is an actual birth certificate. hell, my kid has to prove more to his little league than this man has to be president. he is hiding something here and refuses to show it. he argues that the people who press this issue are being petty and he will not stoop to the demands. this is a cover for the real facts.
3.) he is muslim. he fell in love with a christian woman. the choice of church, pastor and the religion their children are raised under is the choice of the woman in a typical christian marriage. he has merely tolerated the great [link deleted] over the years to appease his wife. i wouldn't doubt if he has a prayer rug under his desk in the oval office.
4.) the limousine liberal has now been promoted to the lear jet liberal. everyone i work with who makes more money that i do voted for this freak and is now starting to really regret it. they all stated early on that they wouldn't mind paying a little more in taxes to help fund his agenda. they are going to get screwed now with his 250k threshold and then all of the other crap he is going to lay on them and the rest of us via his power grab and "energy" bill that is a value added tax on everything hidden in a cloak of "green politics".
5.) draw the line and it just goes left to right:
ge ceo jeff emmelt---> nbc/msnbc--->ge--->wind mills--->in the tank--->obama supporter
and you think that the media isn't in the tank for this fool of a president?
6.) myth number 6? not everyone in this world was raised with a liberal agenda as their mantra. some people actually have values and can back up what they say with facts and intelligent arguments. as a conservative and not a republican i cannot say this is true for the majority of the voting public that put this fool in office. many of them voted for him by just the color of his skin and those people don't consider that line of thought racist.
Added: 144 days ago by DCleary6
go to the forum/general comments about kontraband/republican myths. i posted this there. you should see the crap that has come in response thus far.
when this new president obama rears his ugly head and reveals his hidden agenda to the world you will be hiding in a hole.
1.) he is a socialist, just read some of his writings and who he has revered as politically worthy. he came from a community development background promoting social programs using legal influence backed by chicago thugs.
2.) what is the big deal in providing an actual birth certificate and not an official certificate stating that there is an actual birth certificate. hell, my kid has to prove more to his little league than this man has to be president. he is hiding something here and refuses to show it. he argues that the people who press this issue are being petty and he will not stoop to the demands. this is a cover for the real facts.
3.) he is muslim. he fell in love with a christian woman. the choice of church, pastor and the religion their children are raised under is the choice of the woman in a typical christian marriage. he has merely tolerated the great [link deleted] over the years to appease his wife. i wouldn't doubt if he has a prayer rug under his desk in the oval office.
4.) the limousine liberal has now been promoted to the lear jet liberal. everyone i work with who makes more money that i do voted for this freak and is now starting to really regret it. they all stated early on that they wouldn't mind paying a little more in taxes to help fund his agenda. they are going to get screwed now with his 250k threshold and then all of the other crap he is going to lay on them and the rest of us via his power grab and "energy" bill that is a value added tax on everything hidden in a cloak of "green politics".
5.) draw the line and it just goes left to right:
ge ceo jeff emmelt---> nbc/msnbc--->ge--->wind mills--->in the tank--->obama supporter
and you think that the media isn't in the tank for this fool of a president?
6.) myth number 6? not everyone in this world was raised with a liberal agenda as their mantra. some people actually have values and can back up what they say with facts and intelligent arguments. as a conservative and not a republican i cannot say this is true for the majority of the voting public that put this fool in office. many of them voted for him by just the color of his skin and those people don't consider that line of thought racist.
Added: 144 days ago by DCleary6
ya might want to actually know what you are writing about before you make dumb mistakes and mouth piece for the democrat retards.
2, 3, 4, and 5. all wrong, way wrong. no, i am not a repuke. libertarian. but your facts and article are so wrong it makes this article scream "stupid."
for one... obama... moderate democrat? are you serious? moderate? have you seen what he has proposed to congress and proposed to the people? not a socialist? you can call a chicken a turkey but that does not make it so. he may call himself a moderate but you can pick any of the following depending on whose pecker he is sucking that day: socialist, communist, marxist, or leninist. holy crap. no wonder this country is going to hell in a hand basket. it is articles like this and people who have no clue what the hell the government is doing versus what they say and even including what they say. sheesh! read something else besides the dnc fliers for a change.
Added: 144 days ago by Ankharan
wow....someone ^ needs a reality pill.
Added: 144 days ago by TechNinja
ok, prove me wrong. you're argument seems to be that i've just made all this up off the top of my head. but you imply by the power of you're own reasoning that you have all the facts. cite something. where am i factually incorrect? hard to refute a non-argument.
Added: 144 days ago by mardod
getting your info from the daily koz, doesn't realy count as factual
Added: 143 days ago by 1adude
1) it's kos, not koz 2) where in the piece or in any of the replies i posted have i stated that i used daily kos as a source?
Added: 143 days ago by mardod
ehhh i think we can all agree that when the government takes on anything it ends creating red tape, will come in over budget, and generally wont function in the way it was intended (i.e. social security,medicare,welfare). if we can agree with that then why would we want them to take on one more part of our public sector utilizing tax dollars we work hard for? i won't feel guilty because i can tell my daughter "it wasn't me" when she asks why we elected a rookie senator with no executive experience and with a questionable past based on the mtv generation thinking he was cool, he was black, and had the awesome message of hope and change to the highest office in the nation. then let him hijack major parts of the economy with his congressional majority and pass the bill for it to her generation. so now i have liberals lecturing me on the definition of socialism and putting marx in the proper context. comprehending the effect of these policies on real people trumps your ability to employ your dictionary or recall your lib college professors rants on marx, but by all means continue through life using your superior intellect and awe inspiring logic because the world wouldn't be able to continue without your ability to navigate a dictionary and post your intuitive analysis on kontraband. in summary i will coin a term not in your dictionary or thesaurus, failocrat.
Added: 144 days ago by midgetcrime
first off, love the username. really. laughed out loud when i saw it. having said that, i wouldn't necessarily say that the social service programs are ineffective. in terms of cost-efficiency, they are operating much better than a private firm could do with them, but i would agree that they are not perfect. once the health care reform package is handled, it would be a bad idea to go and conduct a review of those programs as well to look for ways to better serve the public. you do make a valid pint in that obama doesn't have a great deal of national political experience, but neither did palin and that didn't seem to stem the enthusiasm of her supporters. as long as he surrounds himself with competent advisers and exprertise some level of intellectual curiosity, then i'm a tad less concerned about it.
Added: 144 days ago by mardod
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