Posted on 11/29/2017 3:28:00 PM PST by markomalley
Earlier this week, Donald Trump made a joke at an event honoring the great World War II Navajo Code Talkers. He poked fun at Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who used to claim to be Cherokee despite not having any evidence to substantiate the claim. Democrats and their media footsoldiers decided its racist to mock someone for falsely claiming to be Native American. For example, Jim Acosta of CNN wrote: WH press sec says Pocahontas is not a racial slur. (Fact check: it is.)
Uh, fact check: no. For one thing, as Gabriel Malor said, No, derogatorily referring to a person who falsely claimed to be a Native American as Pocahontas is not a racial slur. It demeans no racial or ethnic group. It definitely demeans women who claim that theyre Cherokee sans evidence.
If your friends make fun of you for falsely claiming you totally have a real, live girlfriend in Toronto and shes really busy so thats why they cant meet her, that doesnt mean they hate Canadians. If people mock you for claiming to be British royalty by unceasingly addressing you as Her Highness, that doesnt mean they hate the queen. You get the idea.
For another, and more on point, its at best an opinion to claim that mocking someone for claiming to be Native American, etc., when she has no evidence to make that claim, is a slur. But thats Jim Acosta. And publicly displaying ignorance of the difference between a fact and an opinion is kind of what hes known for.
Last week, there was a more disconcerting example of journalists confusing fact and opinion. First off, the ever-humble President Donald Trump shared with the world some thoughts about himself:
Since the first day I took office, all you hear is the phony Democrat excuse for losing the election, Russia, Russia,Russia. Despite this I have the economy booming and have possibly done more than any 10 month President. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
The Washington Posts resident fact checker Glenn Kessler responded thusly:
False. Virtually every recent president signed more bills and more substantial ones than Trump in first ten months.
False? False? Did Trumps braggadocious tweet make the claim that he had signed more bills than any other president? No. Is the signing of bills the proper metric, much less the only metric, by which to determine whether a president has done more than any other? Thats debatable at best. And its generous to say that its debatable since presidents can only sign bills that congresses pass, so its a metric highly dependent on factors outside the presidency. Fun fact: The United States has a divided government with separate but coequal branches of government. You can read all about it here.
Still, its just a tweet. Far more troubling was the Washington Posts fact check of Vice President Mike Pences claim that There are more Americans working today than ever before in American history. Now, a fact check of that statement means you check whether its true that more Americans work today than ever before. A reasonable person would suspect it has a high chance of being true if for no other reason than there are more Americans living today than ever before.
In fact, it is factually correct to say that more Americans are working now than ever before. The Washington Post admits this, showcases the numbers (124 million, up from 65 million in 1968), and says Pence is technically correct. So they give him, quite amazingly, three Pinocchios, their little metric that summarizes their analysis of the truthfulness of the statement. Then they admit they wanted to give him four Pinocchios but were constrained by the fact that what he said was true. Im not joking.
This purported fact check, then, is not a fact check. Not even close. Its an I wish Republicans would say things differently check. Or an I wish Republican politicians would not give political speeches check. Or a Count the ways journalists love Obama check. Or even just a Totally opinionated analysis of political speech check. Which is fine! But dont call it a fact check.
The entire Pence check piece is absolutely hilarious to read. It mocks people for applauding Pences true (albeit admittedly innocuous statement) and asks How can Pence get away with making such a grand statement? It says his vocalization of the statistic it admits is true might go down as one of the more ridiculous economic claims made by the administration.
Perhaps most amazingly, it suggests the economy was going really well during the Obama administration (recovering from the effects of the Great Recession) without mentioning the economic stagnation of that era except to mock Trump officials for pointing it out! By the way, this reminds me of another great fact check by PolitiFact last year around this time. Trump said, Obama is the first president in modern history not to have a single year of 3 percent growth.
For that 100 percent completely true statement, which PolitiFact admitted is accurate, he was afforded a Mostly True. Why not just True? Well, because PolitiFact wishes Trump would have judged Obama by quarters instead of annually. Since there were a few Obama-era quarters where GDP was over 3 percent, then he wouldnt have been accurate if hed said not a single quarter instead of not a single year. Again, Im not joking.
Okay, so if a true statement gets three almost four Pinnochios, what does Warrens unsubstantiated claim of being Native American get? Eleventy billion Pinocchios? Twenty gazillion? Just the maximum of four?
If you guessed that the media would run interference, obfuscate, and decline to judge the veracity of her unsubstantiated claim, congratulations, youre one of the millions of Americans who has finally figured out how this game works.
Last year, during the height of Trumps insult game against Warren, the Post fact checker ran a fact check on Trump, headlined Why Donald Trump calls Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas. The fact check admitted there is precisely no documented proof of Warrens self-proclaimed, partial Native American heritage but then concluded the fact check with a refusal to fact check. We will not rate Trumps claim, but urge readers to look into it on their own and decide whether Trumps attacks over Warrens background have merit.
As the Washington Free Beacons Brent Scher wrote, No rating seems to mean Trump is right and we dont want to admit it. Radio producer Steve Robinson wrote: WaPo on Warrens lies: Do your own research. WaPo on factually correct Pence statement: LIES DAMN LIES.
Yesterday we looked at the problems with the Democratic/media campaign to claim its racist to mock someone for lying. As David Reaboi wrote, hiding the fact that Warren isnt actually Native Americanis why people rightly hate the media.
I previously noted the same problem with CNNs first story about Trumps insult of Warren that it obfuscated the main point of her completely unsubstantiated claims of being Native American. A follow-up story, headlined Heres the deal with Elizabeth Warrens Native American heritage, might be even worse.
I mean, take the headline. The deal is that shes not or at the very least, we have no reason to believe she is and she has never provided a scintilla of evidence to explain why she led employers to report to federal regulators overseeing them that she was Native American.
Is Warren part Native American? the article asks. And the section is a-ma-zing:
Warren says, yes, she is, and points to family stories passed down to her through generations as evidence.
I am very proud of my heritage, Warren told NPR in 2012. These are my family stories. This is what my brothers and I were told by my mom and my dad, my mammaw and my pappaw. This is our lives. And Im very proud of it.
In that account and others, a genealogist traced Warrens Native American heritage to the late 19th century, which, if true, would make her 1/32 Native American. (However, the legitimacy of those findings has been debated.)
The Washington Posts Fact Checker page has actually decided against judging the issue at all, offering no rating and, in a piece Tuesday, suggesting readers to look into it on their own and decide whether Trumps attacks over Warrens background have merit.
Are you freaking kidding me. (And I should note that the piece attempts to exonerate Warren even more after this.) So the answer to whether a person for whom there is not a scintilla of evidence to support her previous public claims of Native American status really is part-Native American, according to CNN, is:
1) She says she is.
2) A self-serving quote about family lore that declines to mention that other family members and public records dont share the lore.
3) No mention of falsehoods and contradictions with her previous stories.
4) A false description of a genealogical tracing being debated when it was actually a mistake.
5) And an appeal to the same B.S. refusal to judge the issue.
So lets get this straight: Pence is a lying liar who lies for saying a totally anodyne true thing, But when St. Warren says a thing theres no evidence for and no one can prove, they rush to justify and obfuscate. This is why people dont just mistrust the media they hate the media.
I will personally pay for that DNA test. Don’t doubt that if Lieawatha had even an inkling that it was true, she would have gone right out and gotten one.
Fact Checkers Need to Know What Facts Are
Exactly.
Advancing the agenda is paramount and the facts made to fit it.
Bkmk
Mark
Send it to the Post's ombudsperson.
... Oh ... wait ... there isn't one ...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.