“Tina Fey, Sarah Palin…who cares who said what? Palin’s stupid, right?
Many progressives and liberals (this therefore includes the majority of journalists) are so sure that conservatives are stupid that they allow confirmation bias to make them act stupidly and unethically. Either that, or some of them just choose to lie their heads off and pretend people don’t notice.
I first realized this a while back when the ABC website posted a feature called “I Can’t Believe He Said That!” or something in that vein, featuring verbal gaffes by politicians. Well, actually it featured verbal gaffes by 19 Republicans and one Democrat (Joe Biden, of course.) Oddly, President Obama’s goof about the “57 states” wasn’t there, because, as we all know, he’s brilliant and his gaffes don’t count. Well, actually, the list was 18 Republicans, one Democrat, and Tina Fey. Yes, the celebrated Saturday Night Live Sarah Palin impressionist was represented with her “I can see Russia from my house!” line…except that it was attributed to Sarah Palin. Similarly, I have quizzed people about who first used the non-word “strategery.” Sure enough, about half in my unscientific poll, almost exclusively Democrats, thought it was President Bush, and not the real quote-master, SNL Bush satirist and comedian Will Farrell when he was playing Bush.
This was brought back to mind recently when “Doonesbury’s” Gary Trudeau mocked Mitt Romney for making this spectacularly fatuous, Dan Quayle-like declaration in a stump speech,
“I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that’s the America millions of Americans believe in.”
Trudeau wasn’t the only one: dozens of pundits and bloggers piled on with their scorn, including The Daily Beast’s Andrew Sullivan, the Washington Post’s Alexandra Petri, Wonkette, and liberal humorist Dan Kurtzman, who had it at #10 on his Top 10 Dumb Mitt Romney Quotes. It is a dumb quote, and when I read that Romney had said it, I found it hard to believe, because Mitt Romney may occasionally say dumb things (like anyone who speaks in public frequently), he is not a stupid or uneducated man, and even if this idiotic sentence was handed to him by the top speech writer in the world, he wouldn’t say it unless he was suffering from a lack of REM sleep.
I was right: Mitt Romney never said it, or anything similar. The quote was the invention of conservative commentator Mark Steyn, who in January was mocking the stump speech Mitt was using at the time, an admittedly hackneyed “Let’s get back to what’s great about America!” collection of patriotic, faux-Reagan pablum. Steyn used the quote to sum up his contempt for Romney’s lowest common denominator approach to campaigning for the nomination. Steyn used a device I have used from time to time, characterizing the gist and substance of a statement with a satirical exaggeration of it, trusting that his readers were smart enough to know that he was, as the clever Steyn usually is, intending to be funny. They did, too.
It was Romney’s liberal critics who didn’t get it, didn’t read Steyn’s whole article, didn’t check their facts, and didn’t bother to be fair to Mitt Romney, just like they have seldom found it necessary to be fair to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Rush Limbaugh and many, many others. These and other targets are Republicans or conservatives, and are just assumed to be stupid. The fake Romney quote was especially seductive, because it extolled America, and a lot of progressives and liberals (and again this means most of the mainstream media) think that’s stupid too.
Thus it was that a conservative pundit’s fictional quote, intended as satirical, legitimate criticism of a Republican presidential candidate, was distorted into misinformation and slander about the presumptive GOP Presidential nominee by arrogant and careless liberal pundits, because their bias and disrespect interfered with their common sense, professionalism and fairness, at least of those who have any.
Confirmation bias, as I have noted here before, makes all of us stupid.
And it turns pundits and journalists into liars.
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Pointer: Althouse
Facts: Language Log
Sources:
Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at jamproethics@verizon.net.
Ethics Alarms 
My mother still doesn’t believe that Sarah Palin didn’t say that, it’s infuriating.
The funny thing is that what she actually said is equivalent to that ridiculously stupid quote.
Mr. Marshall, I submit that although your observations are correct, your conclusion is too weak.
Charles Krauthammer points out: “Conservatives think that liberals are stupid. Liberals think that conservatives are evil.”
Everything you say above fits in this framework, as do many other unethical liberal excesses.
Voter fraud. (Hey! Fighting evil here!) Racial politics. (Hey! Fighting evil history!) Propaganda instead of reporting. (Hey! Those people are evil!) The list is long.
What makes liberal reporters so insufferable is that some, at least, know full well that they are manipulating their audience with the use of confirmation bias (see above, or the NYT), misleading editing (Mitt on debit scanning), and flat out misattribution and fraud (see above, or Dan Rather). They don’t care. All of this is justified, because they feel they are fighting evil.
Notes:
RE: Conservatives thinking liberals are stupid. Yes; it’s mostly a math thing, and not the point here.
Is it ethical, Mr. Marshall, to produce ethics alarms to which others may become addicted?
I don’t understand the comment, especially the last line. If the point is that conservatives suffer from confirmation bias too, yes, true, and when I see as blatant and example of that as this one, I’ll flag it too. The fact is that the mainstream media NEVER has tried to make President Obama look stupid, even when he has made stupid comments, like his statement that it would be “unprecedented” for SCOTUS to overturn major legislation. Since this is an election, and is supposed to be a fair fight, the double standard for Romney and Obama is a legitimate concern.
Regardless of what Krauthammer says, the traditional wisdom as well as popular parlance designates conservatives as stupid, evil, or both. The last three Democratic Presidents were hailed by the media as being of superior intellect, whereas Reagan, Bush, and before them, Ford and Eisenhower were widely represented as dolts. This often works to the GOP’s advantage, mind you, but it is the mindset.
The last line in my comment was simply teasing. I find that I eagerly look forward to your posts.
While I entirely agree with you as regards confirmation bias, and the part it plays in media reporting, my point is that, like Southern Democrat pols in the last century who created, enforced and upheld the Jim Crow laws, liberal reporters honestly, truly, don’t think that they are doing anything wrong. Their mindset is such that they feel their unethical behavior is entirely justified. They don’t see it as unethical.
Frequently, they seem honestly puzzled by those who would question their intent, accuracy, fairness or ethics. This is why I, and many others, grant them the same degree of credibility as the Iraqi Information Minister from the first Gulf War. (Gotta say, I miss that guy,)