As I related in my last post, I had been without a home Internet connection since July 13th, and finally got it back on the second of August. Just going through the accumulated e-mail alone took almost three days. There's no telling what stories I could have commented on during those days, but was unable to easily find and save such stories. It was a very frustrating experience, and I'm glad that it is finally behind me.
One thing that I did notice was a particular phrase that kept popping up in the editorial and letters to the editor parts of the newspaper that I keep an eye on. This phrase usually runs this way, “Dick Cheney has said that Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't matter.” Or perhaps, “Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't matter, like Dick Cheney once said.”
You get the idea.
Interestingly, I have never come across this phrase and subsequent attribution until the past 5 or 6 weeks or so. And my reaction to this phrase the first time I saw it was, “Really? That doesn't sound like something that Cheney would say.”
But then I came across the phrase in local writer Gene Lyons' weekly column. That was when I figured out the quote was a fake. I used to fisk Gene's columns on a weekly basis (or whenever I felt like it) for many years, but have let that duty fall by the wayside in the past couple of years. There's only so many times that you can refute a liar until you get tired of it, and it finally got monotonous. There have been only two columns that Gene has wrote in the past 6 years or so that could be considered to not have a lie in them. Both of those columns were almost entirely devoted to a cow that he had found and taken care of.
Don't laugh, they were actually well-written accounts, and rather touching.
Anyway, having actually read and fisked these columns, I've become familiar with Gene's methods of lying. So whenever I read the phrase in one of Gene's columns, that was an instant tip-off that the phrase was a phony. So I started researching the phrase, and by golly, when I'm right, I'm right.
The phrase first appeared in this UK Guardian newspaper column from January 12, 2004. Read this relevant paragraph for yourself, and see if anything jumps out at you:
In his own account, Mr O'Neill discovers the hard line on tax cuts is coming from Mr Cheney. Not knowing he was in his last weeks as Treasury secretary, he went to see the vice president expecting to get a sympathetic hearing for his concerns over the deficit. Instead he is told: "You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due."
Well, that certainly smacks of the Gospel truth, doesn't it? Why, we should just close up shop and... wait a minute. What were those first four words, again? “In his own account”?
Say, do you think that maybe Mr. O'Neill might have been selling a book, maybe? If you thought that, you might be surprised to find out that yes, yes indeedy, Mr. O'Neill *WAS* selling a book at the time!
Why, isn't that the strangest coincidence that you ever heard?
But wait, there's more!
Let's read some other paragraphs about the sainted Mr. O'Neill, shall we?
In the Bush White House, Paul O'Neill was the bespectacled swot in a class of ideological bullies who eventually kicked him out for raising too many uncomfortable questions. Now, 13 months later at a critical moment for the president, the nerd is having his revenge.
Mr O'Neill's account of his two years as Treasury secretary, told in a book published tomorrow and in a series of interviews over the weekend, is a startling tale of an administration nominally led by a disengaged figurehead president but driven by a "praetorian guard" of hardline right-wingers led by vice president Dick Cheney, ready to bend circumstances and facts to fit their political agenda.
According to the former aluminium mogul and longstanding Republican moderate who was fired from the US Treasury in December 2002, the administration came to office determined to oust Saddam and used the September 11 attacks as a convenient justification.
Fired, you say? Whatever for, I wonder? Oh look, the story continues on, maybe we'll find the answer there:
White House aides have also pointed to Mr O'Neill's reputation as a gaffe-prone Treasury secretary, who at one point triggered a run on the dollar by suggesting that maintaining its strength was not a priority.
Gaffe-prone, you say? What a complete coincidence!
Why, this entire account sounds as if the poor, aggrieved Mr. O'Neill was just the victim of circumstances, a lone warrior, alone, fighting against the forces of darkness, abandoned by his fellow compatriots, alone, resolute in his determination to overcome said forces of darkness. There's absolutely no incentive for this brave, lone warrior to distort his record or to make himself look good.
Nope, nosiree, if you think that, you are completely mistaken, mister. You are barking up the wrong tree. Your sniffer is off. There is not a particle of truth to such an opinion there, buddy.
Let's sum up the situation here. We have a discredited and disgruntled former employee stating that a political opponent made a statement that seems to be at odds with that opponent's stated political philosophy. There are no witnesses or audio recordings to back up said former employee's account. And, wonder of wonders, said former employee is out hawking a book in a sensationalist media.
Why, that sounds like a perfectly credible witness to me! Let's start building the statue!
In the immortal words of Homer Simpson, “In case you can't tell, I'm being sarcastic!” (There is truly a Simpsons' quote for every occasion.)
But wait, maybe I'm being overly cynical. Maybe I should put myself in somebody else's shoes. Let's perform a little thought experiment, shall we? (Liberals, you are excused from this exercise. This is a *thought* exercise, and not a *feeling* exercise.)
Let's say that Little Timmy “Turbo Tax” Geithner is fired tomorrow morning. Obama just calls him into his office, and tells him to clean out his desk, he is gone. Little Timmy makes his way back to obscurity, settling into his life of mediocrity once again.
A year passes, and Little Timmy starts making the media rounds. He has spent the past year banging away at his word processor, and a tome has sprung from the keys of his computer. While he is making the rounds, he states unequivocally that he has seen with his own two eyes Obama's real birth certificate, and it states that Obama was really born in Indonesia. Furthermore, Obama had talked to him on that fateful day one year ago, and Obama had confessed that his true aim of being President was to completely destroy the United States through any means necessary, followed by the most sinister laugh (Muah-hah-hah-hah!) Little Timmy had ever heard in his whole entire life.
I'm sure that the liberals would treat such revelations as the Gospel truth that they have treated Mr. O'Neill's, don't you think?
Yeah, right!
Now, we all know that the above scenario will never happen. Mainly because Little Timmy would be found dead in his car, having committed suicide with three rifle shots to the back of the head. Or maybe by accidentally getting his feet stuck in wet cement and falling into a very deep lake, about a third of a mile away from shore.
Not that I'm implying anything.
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