Spin-proof snapshots of America                                 

The Lie Makers

Do they have no real complaints?

Saying that John Kerry is a "waffler" is a distortion -- he's lead decisively both in combat and in politics -- but since it's a matter of opinion the statement is no lie. Just a partisan, ad hominem attack.

Outright lies are different, and these G.O.P. talking heads use them on a regular basis.

Ann Coulter

uses so many outrageous methods of lying, it's hard to pick one. But here's a good example.

She says that New York Times didn't mention a controversial speech made by Jesse Jackson for British TV on Christmas Day, 1994. Her endnotes explain her claim by saying, "LexisNexis search of New York Times... for 'Jesse Jackson and Germany and fascism and South Africa' produces no documents."

Imagine that!

The Times did, of course, run the article (12/20/04, the speech text was released in advance).

Al Franken, in Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, says,

"Using Coulter's technique, I can prove.. the Washington Times did not cover the incident in which George H. W. Bush thre up on the Japanese prime minister. A LexisNexis search from January 1992 for "Bush and Japan and prime minister and lap and cookies and tossed' produces no documents."

Franken also gives an excellent example of distorted reporting by Bernie Goldberg, but I'll just suggest you read his book and go on to:

Edward Klein

His smear of Hillary Clinton is so full of holes that even some of the above conservatives (like Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity) have discredited the book.

For those impressed with his

                                           "45 pages of foot notes. Try to debunk that you liberal, touchy, feely, want to be world savers!!!!!" (-Amazon.com reviewer)

note that endnotes (or even footnoes) don't make false "facts" any more true. They do make it easier to look up the "evidence," such as that presented for his claim that Chelsea was conceived through rape: that Hillary Clinton said in her own book said she went to Bermuda. That's it. Really. That's his entire reasoning, as you can see in the Hannity excerpt in our Hillary Clinton section.

John O'Neill

founder of the embarrassing Swift Boat movement, fills both his book and speech with outrageous lies.

While his most wild claims, such as saying John Kerry's ultimate goal was "the triumph of World Communism" (this, about a Presidential candidate whose first V.P. pick was a REPUBLICAN considered to be one of the front-runners for his party's next nomination. That nutty liberal Kerry!), are matters of opinion, he makes enough factual claims for us to weigh directly.

And boy, are lots of them dead lies.

He claimed, for instance, that Kerry hadn't done two tours of duty in Vietnam (he had, one the USS Gridley, and then on two swift boats in the Delta). He might have said that one was less dangerous, but no, he had to resort to an outright lie.

O'Neill also lied about his OWN past.

He denied his Republican ties, saying, "I haven't voted for a Republican since 1988."

That's highly unlikely, given that he donated $1,000 to  to George H.W. Bush in 1992 when he was running for reelection against Bill Clinton. He's also made $15,000 in contributions to federal races -- all Republican -- spread over all but one federal election cycle since 1990.

Still possible that he didn't vote for the people that received his donations?

Awfully unlikely, but possible (in a literal sense -- but even if it were true, his claim would be deliberately deceptive).

But here's a kicker: he voted in the 1998 Republican state primary. His choice of candidate is private, of course, but it's pretty hard not to vote Republican there.
 

Robert Novak

His recent explosion -- and his conflicting comments about what he did not discuss with Karl Rove - aside, here's a nice one:

He told CNN that Howard Dean said in 30 years, Social Security would lose 80 percent of its benefits. Dean had actually said that without changes, it would retain 80 percent of it s benefits.

Novak brushed it off as a minor error... but he had made the same claim three days earlier to the Cornell Daily Sun. Get your facts straight, Bob... people apparently trust you.

Bill O'Reilly

This one is well-know and still worth including for its belligerent disregard for the truth.

During an interview with National Organization for Women president Kim Gandy (O’Reilly Factor, 2/5/02), O’Reilly claimed that "58 percent of single-mom homes are on welfare."

When Gandy questioned that figure, O’Reilly held firm: "You can’t say no, Miss Gandy. That’s the stat. You can’t just dismiss it. . . . It’s 58 percent. That’s what it is from the federal government."

The figure is dead wrong, and O'Reilly changed his statement the next night -- without admitting any mistake -- then saying 14 percent of single mothers receive federal welfare benefits (He suggested that food stamps ought to be considered a kind of welfare, but that only gets him to 33 percent-- still 25 percentage points short.)

Nice try, Bill.

Rush Limbaugh

Dr. Spade will include just two of his lies here, from chapter 15 of  The Way Things Ought to Be.

His claim that we have more trees now "than when the Declaration of Independence is written" is dead wrong. The Forest Service, the World Almanac, the U.S. Corps of Engineers all deny it by more than a hundred million acres of lost trees.

Rush then claims that Mount Pinatubo, a Philippine volcano, once released a thousand times more ozone-depleting chemicals than all the fluorocarbons manufactured by all industrial mills, ever.

The trouble is... it's not remotely true. The chemicals from that eruption were water soluable, and not considered ozone-depleting. Those would be CFC's, which are produced only by man.

If he wanted, Rush could say, without lying, that he doesn't care about the ozone layer (James Watt said we could "just wear hats and sunscreen"), or he could try to find evidence that CFC's aren't so destructive, but when he makes up his facts, shouldn't you stop listening to him?

Oliver North

should really cause embarrassment to conservatives everywhere.

Don't you believe in telling the truth? Both as a general policy, and especially when testifying before Congress?

You seemed to get pretty worked up about telling the truth when Bill Clinton gave testimony under oath, but that was just about sleeping with an intern, not running a covert operation that Congress had specifically prohibited.

This man is a folk hero for lying. He also transposed two numbers on a Swiss bank account (really!), secretly sending millions of dollars to the wrong account, but that's just an entertaining side note.

Sean Hannity

Beyond his admiration of Oliver North (especially in Let Freedom Ring),  he claims "Decades of liberal no-growth policies have seriously endangered our economic and national security." (p.205).

We've had only one liberal administration in the past 25 years, and guess when the biggest economic growth in history occurred? You can pretend, like Dick Cheney, that "the government had nothing to do with it" (as he did in the 2000 VP debate), but it's a bit much to lie like Hannity that it didn't happen at all.

His book is full of inaccurate statements, but his charts are the most egregiously incorrect (he claims, for instance, that Reagan's proposed budget in 1986 (p.223) was less than the one passed by Congress, when the reverse is true).  If you can't trust his numbers, why trust the conclusions he makes from them?

This the best you can do? Hate-mongers and liars?

The obvious retort is that Democrats are just as bad. Obvious, but untrue.

Yes, Michael Moore is too loose with his facts, particularly in his early books. But what conservatives call his "lies" are objections to his opinions or editing of context. And Moore is a minority in his own group: Al Franken doesn't go after Charlton Heston, and Paul Krugman rarely mentions Rush.

Al Franken is remarkably thorough and accurate. If you're a conservative, you probably don't like his conclusions, but his facts are dead-on.

There's a fundamental difference here. Dr. Spade dislikes Bill O'Reilly because he lies and uses his lies in nasty attacks on people for things they haven't done. Conservatives don't like Al Franken because, despite his consistent arguments and accurate information, he has views that differ from theirs.

A "different view" is not a lie. A lie is when someone says something wrong and knows it is wrong when saying it. For some terrific examples from a wide range of White House insiders, including the president, check our 9/11 page.

You can read both the statements and the facts, then call a spade a spade.