Contempt

Tom Levenson has a really, really smart critique of George Will's extremely fact-challenged bullshit on global warming. Will's technique was to take one small fact glaringly out of context and pretend the lie that it showed the full picture.

If a wife's attorney had her Lothario husband on the stand in a divorce proceeding, he could claim, "I'm not fucking anyone right now," as if that were probative. But then it would turn out that he was getting blown while on the stand (see! not fucking!), and his attorney's explanation for this utter contempt of court would be that his client's claim had been kinda, sorta arguably true on one single day six weeks earlier. So we're all just supposed to let it go. Ah, bullshit!

There's a clear conclusion I draw from the repeated choice conservative pundits have made for expedient rhetoric over what's actually, inconveniently true. They are members of a movement, not truth-seekers. Their product and goal is to manufacture consent of the governed, and it doesn't matter one whit to them whether deceit is required. They may even relish what Bob Somerby calls fooling the rubes.

These pundits are paid handsomely for their prostitution. And in the current media climate, selling out the truth doesn't even come with any risk of being shunned for it.

Public domain map of Arctic Ocean (note: not showing the contentious sea ice) from Wikipedia. Click image for details.