When The Lie Becomes the Truth and Back Again

Take a look at this video from Talking Points Memo about an off camera moment with a few pundits, one of which is Peggy Noonan.



I found out about from Daily Kos where you can read a transcript of what she and the other fella said. The Huffington Report also has a transcript as well.

Flashback 2004

In 2004 there were four of us at the bus stop. Two young black men and a lady named Queen. We started talking about the election. The two young men said they were not going to vote.

We asked why would you risk a second term? They felt that did not have anything more to lose. The first election was tricked, and nothing in that administration concerned them or had an impact on their lives. "They were gonna steal this one to so what was the point of getting worked up?"

Queen and I tried to convince them otherwise. We brought up history (not slavery, there is far more to African American history and culture than slavery). We brought up the ancestors who died for their right to vote. We said you can't allow that administration to remain in office; you don't know what mess is coming down the road. This is an opportunity.

They did not care. They were thinking about moving to South Africa. What did America have to do with them anyway? It got hot and highly verbal. Eventually both side understood each others view. We left it peaceful. We were civil. Then the bus came.

The election came and went. Then the war.
Then Katrina, the budget and the systematic removal of civil liberties and rights.

Back To Present Time

Peggy Noonan believed what she said off-mike. But earlier in the day she wrote something else, that she likes and supports Palin. And later in the day Peggy wrote a clarification and an apology for using the word "bullsh*t and how her words and intent were misinterpreted.
and she didn't mean to imply that the campaign is over. That was not her stated intent.

Peggy also wrote this:

The mainstream media, which has been holding endless symposia here on the future of media in the 21st century, is in danger of missing a central fact of that future: If they appear, once again, as they have in the past, to be people not reporting the battle but engaged in the battle, if they allow themselves to be tagged by that old tag, which so tarnished them in the past, they will do more to imperil their own future than the Internet has.

This is true: fact is king. Information is king. Great reporting is what every honest person wants now, it's the one ironic thing we have less of in journalism than we need. But reporting that carries an agenda, that carries Bubblehead assumptions and puts them forth as obvious truths? Well, some people want that. But if I were doing a business model for broadsheets and broadcast networks I'd say: Fact and data are our product, we're putting everything into reporting, that's what we're selling, interpretation is the reader's job, and think pieces are for the edit page where we put the hardy, blabby hacks".

I don't disagree with that. I wish it was true. Except the hardy blabby hacks are on radio and television too and no one is able to distinguish, comedian from pundit from newsman from former White House official.

Why should I believe anything anymore from any outlet of M$M? Doesn't matter the political party. The mirror has two faces. It seems that only if you are with the cognoscenti do you have access to the truth.

I love good reporting. It is necessary in a democracy. And on the surface political discussions are almost a birthright. But what is going on right now? Geez, I wish the hell I knew.