I respect what you guys (where I’m from “guys” doesn’t upset any gender) are saying, but I just disagree. You say:

“A lie is a lie”

That’s no lie. But I don’t know how helpful it is to call Glenn a liar when he says something that later he acknowledges was not true. Like last week when he took Obama to task for the specific claim (I have NO problem with the strong criticism Glenn is applying to Obama) that Obama is saying that Telecom Amnesty is essential for fighting terrorism. Glenn is smart. He knows what each of those words mean and he certainly understood Obama’s point (no matter how weak it is; and it IS weak). Glenn came back and changed that, highlighting only one aspect of what makes up his strong integrity.

But even if you could make a case that it is ok to call him a liar for what he said (and what he certainly will say in the future), I’m not interested.

I think there is a great satisfaction in boiling this kind of thing down to a simple kind of notion. President Bush and people all over the spectrum are good examples of what this tendency looks like. “There are those who lie and those who don’t. We can have compassion on Liars like Mara, but we must call them what they are!”

But perhaps I get a little jolt of righteousness when the folks on my side argue their points passionately without needing to hallucinate about the moral landscape of those “others”. I like it when “my” side has no need to get red in the face, even in the midst of passionately defending our positions.

Just to note: even on this comment thread, I have read 4 or 5 different interpretations of Mara’s comments. Everybody agrees she is lying, but not everybody agrees on what she means. Somebody who just wrote finds it obvious that Liasson is lying about Obama’s base. This person claims that she said his base is “left wing”. Did Mara say this? Does it mean this person is lying about Mara? It just becomes kind of silly when we “know” so much about lying.

I could be wrong but I thought Liasson was specifying an aspect of Obama’s base. However, you can see that other readers believe other things about what she said. Our “side” should be quick to see ambiguity and not let that interfere with the fundamental points. Everytime we get righteous and “intelligent” about the moral nature of other people, we lose the kind of power we need, I think. The quick jolt that it gives us to be “religious” isn’t worth it, in my opinion.

On the one hand the very fact that there is a discussion about what lying really is highlights my point. On the other hand, I think it is extremely worthwhile to talk about this tendency to “know” who the liars are.

And its panel was not composed of anyone normally viewed as a right-wing ideologue. All not only agreed that Obama's 16 month schedule was unrealistic and irresponsible--and that the "American People" overwhelmingly agreed with this--but that keeping very large numbers of troops in Iraq well beyond this period, on the order of 50-80k troops, for years, is clearly the only responsible thing to do. See, Democracy's hard work, heh heh heh...

Also, while I agree with the person who emailed you that not all of these media types are necessarily liars--some are simply too stupid, lazy and isolated in their own little self-referential beltway worlds to technically be called liars--I also agree that there is, in effect, no difference, as Lincoln said. As media professionals, it is their undeniable job to base their reporting, and opining, on the truth, and nothing but, and whenever it veers from it in any meaningful way, they are, in effect, spreading lies, even if they're technically not "lying". I think of it as the difference between murder and manslaughter. Different process and intent, same outcome: a dead body--in this case, the body politic. These people are clearly helping to kill it.

And let's not forget one of the biggest whoppers in recent memory, Andrea "Republican good, Democrat bad" Mitchell's claim that the majority of Americans were in favor of Scooter Libby's sentence commutation, when in fact only 18% were. Given that she's one of the stupidest talking heads on TV, I can never tell if she's deliberately lying, or just being her stupid self. But it doesn't matter. A lie is a lie, whether intentionally and knowingly told or not. Once it's put out there, it takes on a cancerous life of its own, with similar effects on the body in question.

Maybe it's fair to give give the benefit of the doubt as to whether someone is lying as opposed to just being misinformed, however, if they are given the facts and they either repeat the same BS of fail to correct their statements, then I think it appropriate, fair, and useful to use the words "lie" and "liar" in descriptions of the statements and the person making them. To do otherwise can only aid the spread of misinformation.

Don't go on national tv and attack a presidential candidate citing some "fact" unless you have good reason to do so. Its fine if you make an occasional mistake (as long as those mistakes don't always work against one side *cough anti-Democratic bias cough*) because you simply misremembered someting or if the facts are unclear and you can make a case either way.

But in Liasson's case the facts all point in the opposite direction. This is not misremembering or misinterpreting murky data. Liasson was just talking out of her ass while she launched an attack on a Democratic presidential candidate. All the media whores should be EXTRA EXTRA careful not to lie about Democratic presidential candidates given the way they slandered Al Gore and handed the White House to the most disastrous president in American history.