She Lies Great!
By Andrew Klavan
PJMedia.com
Mark Tapscott is onto something over at the Daily Caller. He points out that Hillary Clinton’s appearance before the House Select Committee on Benghazi last week was marked by (1) good reviews from the press (“Clinton emerges unscathed from high-stakes Benghazi hearing,” said the Washington Post) and (2) new proof that she lied about the causes of the attack (emails documenting that she told her daughter Chelsea and the Egyptian prime minister that the murder of four Americans was not due to a YouTube video BEFORE repeatedly telling the American public that it was). See the video above for Fox News’s Catherine Herridge’s excellent reporting on more Hillary lies.
In a piece called “Lying is America’s Biggest Political — and Media — Problem,” Tapscott writes:
Four Americans died, then Clinton, Obama, Rice, et. al. lied. And we wonder why nobody believes anything said by the government these days, and why the mainstream media has a profound credibility problem. Americans in flyover country know that liars cannot be trusted.
Before Republicans get too self-righteous, however, they better look at the beam of lies in their own eyes. For years, GOP leaders have promised they would reduce the size, costs and power of the federal government, but over and over again, once they get elected, too many of them act as if they never made that promise.
What Tapscott says is all true but I’m not sure I can quite go along with his moral equivalence idea. Republican pols have made promises they didn’t keep. They should be held to account for that, of course, but that is, after all, what politicians do.
Democrats have lied about the facts and have done so for scurrilous reasons. Hillary’s lies about Benghazi, for instance, were meant to protect her reputation and Obama’s re-election campaign talking points. The mainstream media have not only buried those Democrat lies and failed to report on them thoroughly, they have positively cheered the lying Democrats for lying well.
Hillary’s committee appearance was thoroughly dishonest and yet listen to New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow’s triumphant description of it:
It was a televised witch trial. But the tribunal had before it a woman who would not confess transgression and who defied the flame.
Instead, she was poised, knowledgeable and unflappable. She turned the tables. The committee was on trial, and found wanting in motives, authorities and class.
Now I know you will say Blow blows — or you will if you have my cheap and obvious sense of humor. But that triumphal tone was found throughout the left wing media-sphere. The left cheered Hillary’s testimony as one of her best campaign appearances and “presidential,” not because she told the truth, not because her lies were plausible, but because her lies were well-delivered. Her performance was the sort of thing an ordinary stupid voter might fall for. So like… hooray.
Tapscott is right that lying is our biggest political and media problem — but only commentators on the right think it’s a problem at all. To those on the left, it’s a feature not a bug. The leftwing media are living in a post-modern world where words mean nothing, truth is relative and owning the winning narrative is all.