Paul Krugman of the New York Times has come out swinging in tomorrow's Friday's edition of the Gray Lady:
Did you hear about how Barack Obama wants to have sex education in kindergarten, and called Sarah Palin a pig? Did you hear about how Ms. Palin told Congress, "Thanks, but no thanks" when it wanted to buy Alaska a Bridge to Nowhere?
These stories have two things in common: they’re all claims recently made by the McCain campaign — and they’re all out-and-out lies.
Krugman's column is a wonder to behold. The MSM is finally getting this meme, and hitting it hard.
I can’t think of any precedent, at least in America, for the blizzard of lies since the Republican convention. The Bush campaign’s lies in 2000 were artful — you needed some grasp of arithmetic to realize that you were being conned. This year, however, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again.
Not only does Krugman get it with regard to what McCain is doing, he also gets it with regard to the media's complicity in the whole sordid process:
Why do the McCain people think they can get away with this stuff? Well, they’re probably counting on the common practice in the news media of being "balanced" at all costs. You know how it goes: If a politician says that black is white, the news report doesn’t say that he’s wrong, it reports that "some Democrats say" that he’s wrong. Or a grotesque lie from one side is paired with a trivial misstatement from the other, conveying the impression that both sides are equally dirty.
Krugman's ending is a roundhouse blockbuster right in the kisser:
And now the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class. What does that say about how that team would run the country?
What it says, I’d argue, is that the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse.
BAM! POW! Holy Egghead, Batman! The MSM grew a spine!
UPDATE: Thanks for the recs! And the many fine comments, including other recent examples of the media picking up on the "McCain is a liar" meme. Some other examples:
E.J. Dionne in WaPo:
John McCain's deceptions about Barack Obama's views and Sarah Palin's flip-flopping suggest an unedifying scuffle over a city council seat.
The media bear a heavy responsibility because "balance" does not require giving equal time to truth and lies. So does McCain, who is running a disgraceful, dishonorable campaign of distraction and diversion.
Note that E.J. too picks up on the phony "balance" in media that's contributing to the mudslinging.
Charles Babbington at AP (of all places):
The "Straight Talk Express" has detoured into doublespeak. ... Even in a political culture accustomed to truth-stretching, McCain's skirting of facts has stood out this week.
Jonathan Alter on Charlie Rose, in the comment from maryu:
On Charlie Rose tonight (13+ / 0-)
Jonathon Alter from Newsweek made the same point, and said that it was time for the media to start using the word "liar".
Maybe it's spreading.
UPDATE 2:
Another one from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Palin — with the full backing and support of the McCain campaign — is doing herself longterm political damage with this ploy. The American people are watching her repeatedly lie to them, day after day, and watching her do so with no apparent compunction. This is her introduction to the national scene; this is when her image is being cemented into the public mind.
And her image is increasingly that of a guiltless liar.
UPDATE 3:
Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic Online:
If she is a fraud, and has been proven a demonstrable liar in ways that a competent campaign would have vetted six months ago, McCain's campaign is over, and deserves to be over. ... This is the most shambolic campaign I have ever witnessed in a general election. If he runs his campaign this badly, how would he run the country?
Cherry Creek (CO) News:
Sarah Palin: Serial Liar?
Despite a solid debunking, the McCain-Palin campaign continue to traffic in falsehoods about the Alaska Governor's short tenure.
Michael Kinsley, also at WaPo:
The whole controversy is ginned up, a fraud, a lie. All obvious.
I know that by even bringing this up, I am falling into the trap that McCain’s people have set and perpetuating this ridiculous controversy. But the routine acceptance of obvious lies now corrodes our politics as much as the money that was the subject of McCain’s famous act of Republican apostasy: McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform. ... the media have trouble calling a lie a lie, or asserting that one side is lying more than the other -- even when that is objectively the case. ... He says he’d rather lose the election than lose the war. But it seems he’d rather lose that honor he’s always going on about than lose the election.
UPDATE 4:
Geez, this meme is catching on more than I realized ... This from Washington Monthly:
Now, it's obvious she's lying. She knows she's lying. She knows that we know she's lying. But she just doesn't give a damn. At this point, it's bordering on pathological. (According to one count, the McCain campaign has now repeated the lie 23 times.) ... Whatever the motivation, the McCain campaign simply has a problem telling the truth. With each passing the day, the disdain this gang shows for the democratic process becomes a little more breathtaking.
Digg Krugman's editorial here!