{"id":14096,"date":"2008-01-01T14:02:22","date_gmt":"2008-01-01T19:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14096.html"},"modified":"2008-01-01T14:02:22","modified_gmt":"2008-01-01T19:02:22","slug":"cohen-gets-mendacious-and-mendacity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/cohen-gets-mendacious-and-mendacity\/","title":{"rendered":"Cohen gets mendacious about mendacity"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s tempting to skip past Richard Cohen columns just as a matter of habit, but today’s op-ed<\/a> is so odd, one wonders how Washington Post<\/i> editors even let it run.<\/p>\n

The piece, ostensibly, is about taking Barack Obama to task over a misleading statistic he used in a speech. But the piece starts out badly and goes downhill from there:<\/p>\n

John Edwards lied about the cost of his haircuts. Fred Thompson lied about lobbying for a pro-choice outfit. John McCain insists that the United States was founded as a “Christian nation.” Mitt Romney concocted the story about how his father marched with Martin Luther King Jr. And Rudy Giuliani is a one-man fib machine — everything from why he had to provide police protection for his then-mistress to the survivability rates for prostate cancer in Britain. Yet it is something Barack Obama said that bothers me most of all….<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The irony is rich. Cohen wrote a piece about the importance of accuracy, and the first nine words — “John Edwards lied about the cost of his haircuts” — are false. If Cohen wants to raise a fuss about the cost of Edwards’ haircuts, that would merely be annoying (though it would be consistent with the Post’s<\/i> disconcerting obsession<\/a> with the subject). Instead, the columnist emphasizes the importance of getting the details right, while making up a “lie” that never happened.<\/p>\n

The McCain example is also bizarre. Yes, the Arizona senator claimed we were founded as a “Christian nation,” and we were not. But that’s not an example of mendacity; it’s an example of ignorance. McCain wasn’t lying; he was just foolishly pandering to the religious right with nonsense. That’s worthy of criticism, of course, but for different reasons.<\/p>\n

If Cohen really wanted to throw McCain into the mix, he could have at least found some actual examples of the senator’s mendacity, such as McCain’s lies<\/a> about his criticism of the Rumsfeld policy, or his spectacular<\/i> lies<\/a> about going for a safe stroll in a Baghdad market in March.<\/p>\n

One gets the impression that Cohen, who’s been around long enough to know better, just casually threw in some accusations of dishonesty in the hopes of achieving some kind of “balance.” Regrettably he did so a) without getting his facts straight; and b) in a column about the importance of people getting their facts straight.<\/p>\n

It’s really not a good way to start out the new year.
\n
\nAnd what of Obama’s “lie”?<\/p>\n

What concerns me is the lie or fib or misstatement — call it what you want — involved in Obama’s assertion that more young black men are in prison than in college. It is a shocking statistic — and it is wrong. But when The Post’s lonesome but formidable truth squad, Michael Dobbs, brought this to the attention of the Obama campaign, he not only got the brushoff but the assertion was later repeated.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, if this is right, and Obama repeated a bogus statistic, he’s in the wrong, no doubt about it. There have been far more dramatic lies from presidential candidates, and this one seems largely inconsequential, but would-be presidents should strive for 100% accuracy, regardless of party.<\/p>\n

But Cohen applies a standard here that doesn’t make a lot of sense.<\/p>\n

When John McCain sticks to his insistence that the Constitution established the United States as a “Christian nation,” I don’t like it, but I know McCain and I know his character. He has a record in public life going back, essentially, to 1967, when he was shot down over Vietnam and repeatedly tortured by his captors. Back in 2000, I might have gotten a bit “delusional” over him, but I had my reasons.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I see. So, McCain lied, even though he didn’t, and that’s fine, because Cohen has known him for a long while. Obama cited a bogus statistic, and that’s worth an entire column, because Cohen hasn’t known him very long.<\/p>\n

It’s going to be a long year, isn’t it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s tempting to skip past Richard Cohen columns just as a matter of habit, but today’s op-ed is so odd, one wonders how Washington Post editors even let it run. The piece, ostensibly, is about taking Barack Obama to task over a misleading statistic he used in a speech. But the piece starts out badly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14096\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}