Painting the Other Side with a Broad Brush is Fun! And Fun Trumps Accuracy!
Brad from Sadly, No! says to me:
I said that the AP should have run a correction of its initial report, since the language didn’t accurately describe what actually happened. I don’t know what more you want me to say about it. Oh wait, yes I do. You want me to admit that the AP is involved in helping the terrorists.
Oooooooh! The conservative boogeyman thinks the AP is in league with the terrorists! Ooooooooh!
Except, of course, that I don’t — as a cursory search of my site reveals. For example, here’s my post from January 5:
You’d have to be crazy to think that there is a widespread conspiracy of AP reporters to help the enemy. Most of them are out there doing a dangerous job. I don’t always think the information is reliable, which is in part a function of the nature of Iraq in general . . . but we should recognize the sacrifice they are making to try to tell us what’s going on.
Meanwhile, Brad’s howling pack of monkey-commenters shrieks that folks like me are simply trying to hide the fact that things are bad in Iraq. A guy calling himself “fridgemagnet” is typical: “This has never been anything except a tactic to distract attention from the actual events.” I have quoted Allah’s take on this before, but in light of the monkey-shrieks, maybe it’s worth the effort to quote it again, with my emphasis:
The only thing that really annoys me about the left blindly defending the AP here is the argument, made most emphatically by Eric Boehlert, that we’re using this incident somehow as a fig leaf for how bad things are in Iraq. If the AP turns out to be lying, the theory goes, we’ll declare all reportage from Iraq suspect by extension and conclude that things aren’t nearly as dire as they seem to be. Which, of course, is patent nonsense. There are Shiite death squads operating in hospitals in Iraq; if you knew nothing else about the country, you could glean from that fact alone how unspeakably horrible conditions are throughout the country.
We’re not using this story as a fig leaf for the war. On the contrary, it’s Boehlert — the same guy who wrote a book claiming that the media is, giggle, right-wing — who’s using the war as a fig leaf for the AP’s anti-American bias. According to him and his pals, to challenge the veracity of this story is to be guilty, essentially, of historical revisionism, of denying the brutality Iraqis are facing. Oh sure, they say en passant, if the AP got it wrong they should be called on the carpet for it — while in the same breath they dismiss the charges as a “smear campaign” or “baseless” or whatever conclusory pronouncement you prefer. They don’t care if the AP blew it or not. They say they do because they know they have to. It’s purely pro forma.
The truth is, and you can see this in Boehlert’s piece or Tom Zeller’s piece in the Times a few weeks ago, they think the AP story is true in the Larger Sense, as a microcosm of the brutality in Iraq, even if it’s not, you know, technically true. Which, my friend, is just another way of saying “fake but accurate.” That’s precisely the line they’re taking on this story, which is why it’s so outrageously disingenuous of them to pretend to give the slightest shit about whether Jamil Hussein is real or not. As far as they’re concerned, if he’s real, the story’s true; if he isn’t real, the story’s True. Heads they win, tails we lose. And the AP, if it’s guilty of bad facts to whatever greater or lesser degree, gets an almost completely free pass. It’s more important that Michelle Malkin be wrong, you see, than finding out if the world’s biggest news agency is passing off crap stories about the most important issue of our time. Repulsive.
. . . . Anything they can do to shore up the AP’s credibility, any argument they can make, they’ll do it, because like I said above, that’s what this is really about — protecting the left-wing media from a credible charge of malfeasance, even though it wouldn’t mean much in the grander scheme of how awful things are in Iraq.
That is right on the money. Every word of it. [UPDATE: OK, maybe there is one word I disagree with: the AP‘s “anti-American” bias. I would use the word “anti-war” and not “anti-American.”] As I said before:
I completely agree with Allah’s take on this. Things in Iraq are bad. In fact, in some ways, things may be worse than many realize, largely due to our decision to repeat the failures of the end of the Vietnam war. Nobody responsible is saying everything is great there, and the lefties who claim that we are, are liars. Pure and simple.
That, Sadly No! commenters, means you.
Reinforcing the point, I said of the Burning Six story in this post:
[I]s it really that hard to imagine such an atrocity in the vicinity of Baghdad nowadays? The answer is, of course, a resounding “no.”
It’s so very much fun to paint the other side with a broad brush. For Brad and his commenters, the fun outweighs any need to be accurate.
P.S. And yes: knowing what we know now, I think the war was a mistake.
Also, it’s probably not constructive for me to describe Brad’s comments as a lack of concern for accuracy. I have contempt for a lot of the commenters at Sadly, No!, many of whom generally treat any opposing point of view, however politely expressed, with disdain and profanity. They did it to DRJ yesterday, and are doing it to Bradley J. Fikes today. It’s embarrassing. But Brad and Gavin are talented writers and have some degree of intellectual honesty. It’s probably worth acknowledging that. It’s not true of all the posters there, but it is true of those two.
Aren’t you and Allah painting the other side with a broad brush? Instead of “some commenters” you refer to a “howling pack of monkey-commenters”, as if everyone who comments agrees with the Sadly No! guys on this. Isn’t that broad brush? Your quote from Allah begins with an accusation of “the left blindly defending the AP” but focuses on Boehlert, although my reading of the lefty blogosphere indicates that most of “the left” have pretty much ignored this stupid Jamailgate nonsense or simply made fun of the right for obsessing about it so much.
Whatever point you had is lost when you commit the same sin you are accusing the other side of committing.
[Name the Sadly, No! commenters who are defending me on this. G’head. . . Oh, and try to say with a straight face that the SN! bloggers haven’t been defending the AP and attacking Malkin on this story. — P]
Aplomb (b1076c) — 2/3/2007 @ 10:45 pmAplomb:
There’s a difference between referring to “the left” generally, and accusing a specific blogger of a specific sin which he is not guilty of, because some people sharing his ideology are guilty of it.
It would be the difference between 1) referring to the SN! commenters generally as a pack of monkeys, which they are, and 2) specifically taking one of them who is reasonable and disagrees with the sheeplike views of the rest of them, and slagging *that one guy* because he is a Sadly No! commenter and therefore must be unreasonable.
The latter is analogous to what Brad and his monkey-pack have done to me. I am the evil conservative who says the AP is in league with the enemy, and who wants to pretend nothing bad is happening in Iraq. The fact that I am on record as saying the exact opposite means nothing to these people.
Patterico (a8fa4a) — 2/3/2007 @ 10:56 pmI’ve got a troll who used to come to my site (and has now taken up residence on Common Sense Political Thought to castigate me there) who does this same thing. Is it too much to ask for people to accurately quote their opposition? I don’t have a problem with someone who disagrees with me, but when I tell them, “No, that’s not what I said. What I said is…” then they should drop it. Sounds like the same approach here. If the facts are unpleasant, then they have to smear the guy with the facts.
sharon (dfeb10) — 2/4/2007 @ 12:29 amGAWD we got a Brad over on a fishing site that could possibly pass for this same Brad! I think he lives north of you patt! (meaning nothing of course).
I still can’t quite get past that mention in the article of the burning six about the 1.3 gallons of fuel used!
I am amazed with all the chaos that somebody knew exactly to the American measuring unit the amount of fuel used to douse the non existent victims of the burning.
But in reality what matters is that AP lied and more people died tomorrow as a direct result!
The term “AP” is almost synchronous with the term “nifonged” today. Their actions continue to prove to the world they are nothing more than a source of rumors for the world. They mean less and less each passing day and when their tag line appears, one must go off and fact check the item, no matter the location. When that item happens to be in a far off land, it just makes for a much more difficult time verifying the truth.
Anything they report today is always sub strung with “but consider the source”!
I can’t help but wonder what actually happened to REAL reporting! But like our justice system it too has disappeared!
TC (b48fdd) — 2/4/2007 @ 3:01 amOh Patterico, how could you “Swift Boat” the AP?
Mike Myers (4d9a65) — 2/4/2007 @ 5:11 amFor shame, for shame. ROTFLOL
The AP’s non-correction correction (Updated and bumped)…
Part 47 of my Jamilgate series. Continued from this post. This may be the last post I write about Jamilgate [or not]. What else is there to say? al-AP got caught in a lie and is never going to fess…
Bill's Bites (72c8fd) — 2/4/2007 @ 6:05 am“Except, of course, that I don’t — as a cursory search of my site reveals.”
AF (ec5f86) — 2/4/2007 @ 8:39 amWhy the hell else waste your time on this? We’re losing your war. Why don’t you talk about the NIE or the Libby trial? How about Iran?
Why this? To keep the faith in our mandate for victory?
You need somethng to defend your silly cause and this is the best you can come up with.
“armless veteran assaulted for refusing to salute the flag”
briliiant
All right, AF:
Why are we losing our war?
nk (2ab789) — 2/4/2007 @ 8:49 amA. Because we are not big enough?
B. Strong enough?
C. Well-armed enough?
D. Wealthy enough?
E. Because we have a Fifth Column, yourself included, which wants us to lose the war?
The war has gotten caught up in the Bush dementia of the left. They want us to lose because to win, or even get a reasonable result (Still likely to me), would vindicate Bush. There is also the nutty wing that wants America punished for unspecified offenses such as not shutting down capitalism to obey the Kyoto treaty. Even the global warming thing is part of the war on America by the political left. The interesting thing to me, based on some recent travel in Europe, is I don’t think the Europeans trust their news media any more than we trust AP. I was in France last summer and I have never seent the French friendlier to Americans, even in Paris.
The Iraq war is showing us the consequences of the army refusing to learn COIN methods even though a lot of what happened in Vietnam was due to that deficiency. They seem to be learning now and Petraeous is the expert. The surge is really about changing the rules of engagement and letting the troops defend themselves. Maybe it won’t work. Maybe the Sunnis have pushed so far that they have crossed the point of no return and the Shia will have to wipe them out. Fuoud Ajami has a column in the WSJ last week. that should be read.
This is not a contest between Democrats and Republicans. It is a clash of civilizations and those who won’t defend themselves will lose.
Mike K (bf61c4) — 2/4/2007 @ 9:00 amOK, so you don’t think that the AP is in league with the terrorists. You just think that it has an “anti-American bias,” because an initial version of a story reported that some mosques were “destroyed,” rather than that they were burned and blown up. Whatever, dude.
Matt Weiner (e4af3d) — 2/4/2007 @ 9:07 amOh, okay. You don’t think AP is in league with the terrorists. You just think that Allah is “right on the money” when he says that the AP has an “anti-American bias”. And your commenters refer to AP as “al-AP”, talk about a “Fifth Column”, and say things like “AP lied and more people died tomorrow as a direct result”. (Which, incidentally, is a monumentally idiotic thing to say.)
Riiiiight.
arouet (7a4d16) — 2/4/2007 @ 9:53 amSo the bottom line on the burning six is…what? Did it happen or not? When initially reported, it was treated as fact. No questions about authenticity or lack of evidence accompanied the reporting. AP still needs to issue a correction, and so does every other outlet that reported it as fact. “An incident we previously reported on as having happened may not have happened, because it cannot be confirmed with evidence.”, or some such. The record right now says it did happen, when clearly there are solid questions and doubts. It is important because this story had alot of impact and influenced many peoples’ judgements about the war.
jordan (75a4c8) — 2/4/2007 @ 10:03 amNext you’re gonna be telling me there isn’t a widespread conspiracy by Reuters or Al Jazeera to help the enemy.
J Curtis (d21251) — 2/4/2007 @ 10:22 amWhat’s all the hubbub?
Clearly, all those who do not shamelessly support
and continue to trust the judgment of a Chief Executive who operates on gut feeling more than facts on the ground, are supporting the terrorists.
‘Nuff said.
semanticleo (ffd505) — 2/4/2007 @ 10:52 amNo. You are losing the war because you (or your politicians) are not intelligent enough. Funny that you didn’t even consider this option. You are losing the war because there are essentially no “good guys” left in Iraq’s politics, with the “voice of moderation” Sistani issuing “death to gays” fatwa. You are losing the war because the only achievable goal now, the only possible “victory”, is to turn Iraq into “Iran N2”.
NN (f82c0b) — 2/4/2007 @ 2:21 pmYou are losing the war because of the tough-guy mentality. At least, this is what Gen. Petraeus thinks. The No. 1 mistake in fighting insurgency is, according to him: to “overemphasize killing and capturing the enemy rather than securing and engaging the populace”. You are losing because fighting insurgency is not really about killing bad guys (at least, this is what Gen. Petraeus thinks). Because “Some of the best weapons do not shoot” (at least, this is what Gen. Petraeus thinks).
And, of course, you are losing the war because of the idiotic “Fifth Column” myth, which deprives the country of the intelligent discussion. The point of no return in Iraq was probably crossed at the time when right-wing bloggers considered even questioning the idea that all is perfect in Iraq to be un-patriotic and defeatist.
Sure, “leftists want US so that they would be vindicated”. Next stop, “Al Gore wants the Global Warming to cook the Earth just to have fun at Rush Limbaugh’s expense”.
“Next stop, “Al Gore wants the Global Warming to cook the Earth just to have fun at Rush Limbaugh’s expense”. ”
And when it doesn’t, Al Gore, the Prophet, Seer, and Revelator of the Church of Henry David Thoreau of Latter-day Environmentalists, will simply issue another holy revelation for the Green Doctrine and Covenants stating that he wasn’t “faithful” enough to have accurately prophesied humanity’s impending destruction.
Chris (3f23b9) — 2/4/2007 @ 2:56 pmOk, NN:
Do you want us to win?
nk (d7a872) — 2/4/2007 @ 3:02 pmThe latter is analogous to what Brad and his monkey-pack have done to me. I am the evil conservative who says the AP is in league with the enemy, and who wants to pretend nothing bad is happening in Iraq. The fact that I am on record as saying the exact opposite means nothing to these people.
Comment by Patterico — 2/3/2007 @ 10:56 pm
Do we really need to post all the proof Patty?
You have said EXACTLY that from the jump.
How did the conservative movement become so rife with willful liars?
Oh yeah, they elected one.
joe (008732) — 2/4/2007 @ 4:59 pmI don’t know that Patterico said it, but I’m saying it. The AP is the left’s lap-dog, and along with its MSM clients is in league with the enemy. Do you want to start with Newsweek’s “mutilated Korans” story or the NYT’s serving as Al Qaeda’s counter-intelligence service by leaking every classified counter-terrorism program it can? And go down the line to every Bush-hater who wants to bring down America as long as it also brings down Bush?
And NN: Crickets? Do you want us to win?
nk (35ba30) — 2/4/2007 @ 5:11 pmTranslation: We don’t really have proof, but like all SN-tards, truth is what we assert!
OHNOES (d573a4) — 2/4/2007 @ 6:03 pmIf anyone is interested, I tried my hand at fisking the sorry joke of a report on the Libby trial that was in today’s WaPo.
It’s the sole entry on my blog in the last two years: dislogue.dansch.net
Comments are disabled (no comment spam!) but the discussion on the trial is over at justoneminute.com.
Dan S (205dac) — 2/4/2007 @ 6:28 pmJust a question: — I’ve been reading comments at ‘Sadly,No’ and I don’t really understand why they all seem to think you’re a jerk.
Any thoughts?
[If you buck the party line even a tiny bit, you’re scum. Any conservative is stupid and evil. It’s a comfortable world of self-righteousness they inhabit. — P]
anonymous (67d453) — 2/4/2007 @ 7:08 pm“Any conservative is stupid and evil.”
Okay … clears it up for me.
anonymous (67d453) — 2/4/2007 @ 9:24 pmIndeed. There sure are a bunch of pricks over there.
I think you are the worst of them: a guy who once made a not-so-veiled reference to disclosing my home address.
Buh-bye.
Patterico (a8fa4a) — 2/4/2007 @ 9:31 pmBut I do agree with you that it is a moronic point of view to believe that all conservatives are stupid and evil. I don’t even think that of all, or most, liberals — though I do think it of you, you gutless wonder.
Patterico (a8fa4a) — 2/4/2007 @ 9:33 pmAP is using people off the street in Iraq whom they probably have never had one on one face to face contact. Which means it is possible all of their bad news stories are fake. But even that doesn’t trouble me as much as the realization that we could win this war and never have it reported. Good news will just be sanitized from the public eye.
papertiger (8fc9ce) — 2/4/2007 @ 10:05 pmActually, I’m an outsider, so you can’t frame it as a “patriotic” question. (The “patriotic” me would probably want you to lose). But, yes, I want you to win, not because I want your political arrogance to be justified, but because you owe it to the people to whom your stupidity has caused such immense amount of pain and destruction. You know, all those guys dying in dozens every day because of the brilliant strategy of “fighting them there so you don’t have to fight them here”. How wonderful must it feel to Iraqis to know that another 9/11 never happened, and it only cost twenty times their lives and just a couple of millions of refugees (you can even take 200 of them every year) to prevent.
NN (9c16c2) — 2/4/2007 @ 10:51 pmBut when I read this nonsense about “leftist media bias” and “good news that goes unreported”, I again start to think that “winning” would mean only more pain and destruction, and this I don’t want.
Fair enough, NN. Thank you for responding.
nk (2ab789) — 2/5/2007 @ 4:15 am[…] Patterico points out here that he is not all crazy all the time, as this quote reveals: You’d have to be crazy to think that there is a widespread conspiracy of AP reporters to help the enemy. Most of them are out there doing a dangerous job. I don’t always think the information is reliable, which is in part a function of the nature of Iraq in general . . . but we should recognize the sacrifice they are making to try to tell us what’s going on. […]
Sadly, No! » Fair is Fair (d83a19) — 2/5/2007 @ 4:44 amP.S. And yes: knowing what we know now, I think the war was a mistake.
Really… If the Iranians had known that Saddam was faking the the whole WMD thing, do you think Saddam would still be there, without the war ? Would the status quo have held ?
Hell no. And it would be an even bigger mess now.
And Bush would be blamed for doing nothing to stop it.
Neo (cba5df) — 2/5/2007 @ 6:48 amNN (#15 & #27) said it well. And, nk, he shredded your false set of possibilities as to why we are losing. That list you presented is a lovely illustration of the right’s attempt to place defeat in the lap of the political left. The national myth about not winning because the left doesn’t want to is a hackneyed cover for incompetence and dishonesty
I would certainly like to see more unity in our war effort, even at the cost of the administration’s accountability. But that’s the tradeoff we’re looking at here, and there is plenty of basis for the left’s reluctance to make it. Still, I feel the way I feel because them’s priorities, and a lot of lefties also recognize that. When push comes to shove I don’t want to cut off the nose to spite the face, i.e. lose the war to prove the admin wrong, just because Bush’s presidency is an affront to our values and a blight on our nation.
It’s true that there are legit questions about AP’s reporting and that NYT has an editorial slant – so does Moonie media and Fox. The real question is, just how much blame can you credibly heap on the left, including (for my limited purpose here) AP, NYT etc., for the craptastic situation in Iraq, when there are a lot of identifiable factors, strategic and tactical, for that situation, unrelated to dissent at home? Apparently, you think all the blame can be conveniently handed over in mid-stream. That is false, divisive, and driven by political cowardice.
Blaming those who were skeptical about the mission, once the mission is failing (in many respects), smacks of monday-morning scapegoating and is falsely letting someone off the hook elsewhere. In other words, the Fifth-column bullshit is as fake and overheated as anything Sheehan or SN commeters are saying. It’s all bloviation.
biwah (2dcf66) — 2/5/2007 @ 8:59 amReally… If the Iranians had known that Saddam was faking the the whole WMD thing, do you think Saddam would still be there, without the war ? Would the status quo have held ?
Attention Neo: they did know. Everybody around the world who paid attention knew there were no WMDs.
That said, Saddam had used sarin and mustard gas on Iran previously so Iran was unlikely to want to re-fight a war that had been so disastrous for it.
Righteous Bubba (47bf68) — 2/5/2007 @ 9:06 amBiwah,
I am a simple person and not very good at entertaining two mutually contradictory ideas at the same time.
1. The blame for the war was Saddam Hussein’s and no one else’s;
nk (2ab789) — 2/5/2007 @ 9:31 am2. Now that we took him out, we have an obligation not leave Iraq in chaos, to the Iraqis and to our children who will have to deal with the mess later if we do not deal with it now;
3. I am no general. I cannot rationally blame our military for not getting the job done more quickly and cleanly;
4. That the left has been using opposition to the war for political capital has been obvious to me since John Kerry switched his position in order to win the nomination in 2004;
5. That the left hates George Bush has been just as obvious since 2000;
6. In the majority of the media I see blatant partisanship on the side of the Democrats and I do not trust either their ethics or sincerity in anything they report critical of the President or of the war.
nk,
You forgot to address the point, i.e. where you place the blame for our currently hapless situation at the feet of the domestic political left, ignoring all the real causes for us having gotten to this point over the objections of a myriad rational commenters both inside and outside the government.
But never mind.
biwah (1fe4cb) — 2/6/2007 @ 5:26 am“You forgot to address the point, i.e. where you place the blame for our currently hapless situation at the feet of the domestic political left ….”
Sorry. I’ll be clearer. We are not in a “curently hapless situation”. It is a chimerical creation of “the domestic political left” and its allies. They would like us to believe that we are losing this war and doing their best by their demoralzing defeatism and “cut-and-run” proposals to give substance to their chimera. If they have their way and we leave Iraq too soon then we will have lost the war.
nk (32c481) — 2/6/2007 @ 8:04 amRight, because it wasn’t that you were fooled into believing he had WMD by our administration, it was Saddam pretending to have WMD.
You can’t take responsibility for anything.
Zoroastrian (098342) — 2/6/2007 @ 9:40 amnk,
It is a chimerical creation of “the domestic political left” and its allies.
You sound positively postmodern. This is becoming par for the course for the right wing doing its rhetorical backbends to show that none of the war is the fault of the administration and the indiscriminately warmongering right. Or, alternatively, it’s not about blame anymore, and that discussion is so 2003.
I’ve accepted that there isn’t going to be agreement on these points, so am just letting you know how I feel. And, for the record, I tentatively applaud what we are doing now in Iraq. But I can’t take seriously the “blame anyone but the folks who got us here” approach.
biwah (2dcf66) — 2/7/2007 @ 8:09 am