Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), in the video at right, describes on the floor of the U.S. House this week what anyone paying attention already knows: how the “Rightwing Echo Chamber” works. He describes a completely false charge by Wall Street Journal’s professional liar and GOP operative, John Fund, last November alleging — with no basis whatsoever — that Rep. Barney Frank (D-VT) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) would soon be introducing legislation for “universal voter registration.”
Frank says, “It’s a lie, it’s a myth.” But, he says, the “totally fictional allegation by John Fund with no basis whatsoever” was then picked up and reported as fact by the Washington Times, and naturally then repeated over the public’s airwaves by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and on and on throughout the wingnut echosphere, as hoped. When Frank called Fund on it, he says, in a letter [PDF] and then by phone, Fund admitted he was in error, said he “told a few people” that he was wrong, but hadn’t published any actual retraction.
“He’s not only a liar, he’s a coward,” Frank accurately noted in his comments this week on the House floor. And here we had recently thought Fund was out of fresh lies.
But what Frank doesn’t note in his comments above, is that the tactic described, as oft used by Fund and so many others on the Right, actually works very, very well…
It was the same tactic they employed after the 2008 election concerning Democratic plans to restore the Fairness Doctrine. Though there was never any notable Democratic effort or interest in actually restoring it (unfortunately), what little interest there was was pushed back after the wingnut echosphere told everyone “Democrats have declared war on ‘conservative’ radio!”
They never did, I wish they had — the rightwing corporate takeover of the public airwaves should be an outrage enough to get every Constitution-loving American (including every real conservative, as opposed to the phony ones, like those mentioned above) into the streets to demand the return of real competition to our own public airwaves — but they didn’t.
In fact, the Righwing’s declared war on the non-existent “War on ‘Conservative’ Radio” was so effective that it helped force the cowardly Obama Administration to remove, as I detailed at Alternet last year, the one tiny paragraph from their White House website announcing a hope to “Encourage diversity in the ownership of broadcast media, promote the development of new media outlets for expression of diverse viewpoints, and clarify the public interest obligations of broadcasters who occupy the nation’s spectrum.”
The GOP echosphere lie was enough to cut off any such real efforts for media reform at the knees, much as I suspect any effort to ensure every American citizen of age gets to vote, as they should, is also likely dead in the water following Fund’s recent, brilliant, democracy-hating lie.
The lie works. And the Democratic Party’s plan to do something about it? John Fund tells me that Frank and Schumer will be introducing legislation for that very soon.
another law that liars fail to enforce against more liars? It’s more of a story that conservative opponents of Frank doesn’t go after him for sleeping with the squid.
A whole generation of Americans have been indoctrinated by this right wing tactic.
It started with the Reagan administration…repeat the lie over and over until a generation of Americans who grew up with that lie, now take the lie as true.
It’s all they know. The mainstream media perpetuated the lies by giving them more attention than the truth…the truth became an after thought.
As the above article says ” the tactic worked” and we’re now in the another phase…
Smear truth tellers as unAmerican god-hating homos, incriminate the poor and reward the thieves (wall street bankers)…fund private armies to suppress any resisters of the lie (Iraqi insurgents were just practice)
In the end…truth wins out as always….but what will the world look like after the lying thieves have killed each other off ?
Stone age ?
Lets not forget the war in Iraq that was trumpeted by the press by reporting lies and using the “White House sources on condition of anonymity said” and then you have
VP Dick on the Sunday talk shows saying “well it must be true, the New York Times published it”
Orwell rolls in his grave is a good movie…
oh ya, I cant wait to read Robert McChesney and John Nichols new book
As I have been saying, and as the Brad Blog has constantly been exposing:
This is a concerted psychological operation.
The brainwashing of America is serious business.
Unless the Left has the resources to counter the lies and broadcast their own message in a way that people will listen to and understand, and give the people the facts to take hold of against the liars, we are done. Welcome to the Matrix.
Maybe it’s time to start taking the lying bastards to court for perpetrating their lies, smears and ultimately defamation of character.
As someone else said take them to court.
So why can’t these liars (Fund, WSJ, Limbaugh) be held accountable for defamation through the legal system? A couple of well chosen civil suits (proof of malice) that result in major settlements will soon put an end to this deceitful tactic. Or are the wimpy Democrats gutless on that front too?