Eclectic commentary from a progressive voice in the red state

Friday, October 2, 2015

Perpetuating lies -- sadly no surprise

I have often either quoted or paraphrased the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan about opinions and facts: “You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”

So, once again, the Amarillo Globe-News has decided to ignore facts to twist an editorial position into its own perverted worldview. The editoriallaments that Congress didn’t show the same stupidity and crassness that the right-wing propaganda rag does on a daily basis. Look, the publisher, Les Simpson, and his main editorialist, Dave Henry, are entitled to their puritanical ignorance. They are even entitled to impose their retrogressive views on their readers. But here is the important part:


Those of us who do a far better job of critical thinking and are far better educated than these two intellectual lightweights have a right to call out their reprehensible behavior. In fact, we have a moral and ethical duty to do so. In the case of the Mondayeditorial, the Globe-News continues its attempt to give legitimacy to the Center for Medical Progress’ videos. Those videos have been roundly discredited and, somewhat surprisingly, some of the anti-choice propagandists have admitted as such. I recently deconstructedthe Globe-News’s prior propaganda piece, so I won’t do so here.


What I will say is attempt to perpetuate the lies has a dishonorable link to history ¾ the techniques of Josef Goebbels. Yes, I am playing the Nazi card because it fits in this case. I suppose if that is what people here want to believe, no amount of factual information is going to change their minds. The area is, sadly, the poorer for it.