Nice graphic, Gateway Pundit! Embarrassing post, though…
Just because progressive blogs are playing this game doesn’t make it OK for you to do it to0.
Here’s the headline, on a breathless post conservative blogger Jim Hoft:
WIKILEAKS BOMBSHELL: Hillary Advisors Admit She “HATES EVERYDAY AMERICANS”
Now here is the “bombshell”:
Obviously, one can glean from the context that the memo does not intend to suggest that Hillary has begun to hate everyday Americans, but that she has begun to hate the phrase “everyday Americans,” as I do. Otherwise, what is the “it” that Clinton henchman John Podesta thinks she should “use”? The memo then says that if she doesn’t say “it,” people will notice. Wait: if she doesn’t say she hates everyday Americans, people will notice? That can’t be right; I’m certain people would notice if she DID say that. No, Podesta wrote that though she has come to hate the hackneyed term “everyday Americans,” he thinks she should use it anyway.
Big deal.
Hoft and his blog Gateway Pundit is a loud and influential one in the conservative blogosphere, so one has to wonder:
…Is he really so stupid that he misread the e-mail that badly? True, there are no quotation-marks, but then Podesta wasn’t writing to the world, but to people who knew what he meant. He wasn’t expecting to be hacked, and the e-mail should be read with that in mind.
…Or is this massive confirmation bias at work? For that to be true, one would have to be certain that Clinton does hate Americans. Why would anyone think that?
…In the alternative, perhaps Hoft knows he’s misrepresenting the e-mail and is doing so to deceive his readers. Why would he do that? All that accomplishes is to undermine their trust in him and his blog.
The headline would unethical and deceptive even if it said what Hoft claims it does. Podesta saying that he knows that “Hillary has begun to hate everyday Americans” would just tell us that Podesta thought that when he wrote the memo. It wouldn’t prove she does hate them, not can Podesta “admit” something on behalf of someone else. If Hoft was a lawyer, and I assume he’s not, he would know this is classic hearsay, and unreliable. One person assertion what another person has witnessed or believes doesn’t prove anything but what the asserting party believes. Hillary advisor admits he thinks she hates everyday Americans would be an accurate headline, again, if Hoft didn’t misrepresent what the memo actually said.
Oh, and the e-mail is from one advisor. Under no interpretation can Hoft accurately say that “Hillary advisorS” admit anything based on it.
To sum up, the post is misleading, factually wrong, and stupid. Otherwise, hey, that’s some bombshell, Gateway Pundit!
This is one more source I won’t be using again.
Ethics Alarms 
It strikes me that this is exactly the form of deceitful misinformation that the liberals have been using for years. I rather thought that the conservatives were better than that. Apparently, Trump not-with-standing, I was wrong.
On average, they are.
But the worst conservative is still worse than the best liberal.
huh? Do you mean, “the worst conservative is better than the best liberal?”
Or “the best conservative is worse than the worst liberal?”
Kinda makes a difference.
Conservatives are learning to forgo their ethics and morals as they realize they have an existential crisis: liberals are showing a wish to silence, punish (lose job, etc.) and even jail their opponents. In that process they can no longer hold the title ‘conservative.’
This is sad but understandable, after 50 years of liberals using conservative decency against them. Losing an ideological debate means something when you are deprived of life, liberty, and property.
I stand by my observation I have expressed elsewhere on this blog site: liberals should fear conservative’s adoption of the liberal playbook, as conservatives will be much better at it. All of that critical thinking skill set conservatives tend to develop that many liberals never master.
I am NOT happy with this, but disheartened.
Yeah, I guess I am, too. The problem, for me, is that the tactics are unethical. Sadly, they are also effective, especially with the low-information voters who seem to be incapable of rational thought. Certainly of critical thought. But that doesn’t make it RIGHT! We could employ the same tactics as the terrorists, targeting them, their families and their heirs and assignees and completely destroy them, but how would that make us better than them. More interestingly, how would that make us DIFFERENT from them?
We would be alive.
They would be dead.
I see you’ve never read the Gateway Pundit. This is actually among his more plausible attempts at deception–a brief glance at the evidence could lead one to the conclusion he came to if you didn’t read any further, which is pretty good for Jim Hoft.
And the answer is yes, Jim Hoft really is that dumb. He’s been proclaimed “The Dumbest Man on the Internet” by various liberal blogs, and with good reason. Some highlights of Hoft’s career include:
–Claiming there was an Islamic crest hidden in the logo of the Nuclear Security Summit
–Claiming that Obama was going to ban sports fishing
–Claiming that Obama had given a major swath of land in Arizona back to Mexico
–Constantly citing fake polls and providing images of “huge attendance” at Trump rallies that are actually from other events
–Claimed that people were prompted by the Jumbotron to applaud at the Tuscon Memorial, when actually what he saw was the closed captioning
–Claiming that the Kalamazoo shooter was a “progressive” because he worked for Progressive insurance
And as far as I know only that last claim was ever retracted.
The fact that the Gateway Pundit is still often cited by conservative blogs is an indictment of conservative blogs.
Yup.
So he’s dumb, and not dishonest. Well, that’s something.
That dumbest man on the internet label, by the way, came from the most Slimy Man on the internet, David Brock and Media Matters. Another source to avoid.
Dumb is indistinguishable from slimy on political internet sites.
That’s why I object to your site or Althouse’s and several others being called political sites. It seems like if politics is involved good sense and decency are in short supply
What is slimy about David Brock?
My understanding is that Brock was an anti-Clinton operative before becoming a leftist and starting Media Matters, and I’m always suspicious of the converted, in any direction (see Horowitz, David).
Well, to work backwards, the FEC has accused him of illegally coordinating with the Clinton campaign. His site takes the absurd position that no progressive or liberal alive has ever done anything unworthy of sainthood, and he attacks any—literally any—news story critical of Obama or Clinton, usually followed by extreme spin and rationalizations. He calls Media Matters a media watchdog when it promotes unethical journalism. ( The model for what he should be doing is Newsbusters, which mostly substantively calls out left-biased journalism and doesn’t pretend to do anything else. True, it has a lot more genuine deception and bias to choose from, but except for the silly “CBS criticizes X involving Republicans, doesn’t mention that Democrat Y did the same thing but worse last year” stories, the usually make a valid case. The also have the sense to not bother deconstructing MM stories, because its shooting fish in a barrel.
But most of all, Brock became famous for writing a vicious right-wing hit piece on Anita Hill (who deserves to be criticized, but not like that), then had an existential crisis (or found out that he wasn’t getting the assignments he thought would pour his way, which is more likely the case), came out as gay, declared that his Hill piece was all a sham and the he hated the conservatives he had thrown in with, and that all of his interviews had been lies. No, he was now a loyal, hard left liberal, and that “conversion” after seeing the light made him instantly a favorite of the left. That’s just the beginning.
Besides, he allows himself to go out in public looking like the photo below. The man has hair, and abuses the privilege:
Good god. I’d never seen a picture.
I was going to post a picture of Jim Hoft, but I thought it was mean. I feel like the “everybody does it” rationalization was invented for this moment:
http://media2.fdncms.com/riverfronttimes/imager/u/blog/2603500/jimhoft_thumb_250x290.jpg?cb=1472615936
It is mean, but that picture made me laugh out loud. I admit it. Thanks.
I think the appearance has a bit more legitimacy in Brock’s case. He slowly morphed into it, and as in the case of Trump, how one presents oneself to the world has probative value when other reasonable options are available.
Seemed to me just like some feedback from Clinton regarding how your speech writers are putting things together. The phrase and question may have some appeal and that is about it. Nothing there so move along folks.
Thanks Jack for writing this up. Now I can just direct all my crazy relatives (who keep emailing me this one, along with the Yoko Ono lesbian hoax story) to your post for the straight scoop.
(Please feel free to delete this as off-topic as you wish of course)
https://www.thefire.org/university-of-tennessee-investigating-student-accused-of-sexual-harassment-for-writing-wrong-name-on-quiz/
This one might bear a comment with your thoughts regarding on it?
You wrote, “but then Podesta wasn’t writing to people who knew what he meant.”
I think you wanted to write ‘was’ instead of ‘wasn’t’.
One of the most sinister forms of typos. I though I was writing “but then Podesta wasn’t writing to the world, but to people who knew what he meant.” Then I leave out the middle, and don’t notice when I read for spelling. Sorry. Fixed.
Well, if you want to talk typos, some will say that it was a typo for you to tag this post as “dishesty.” Frankly, though, this is the most dishesty post you have ever done. Fashizzel!
-Jut
That was a typo. There are about a thousand typos in the tags. I find them all the time and fix them. The sad part is that some of them lead to multiple posts. I have spelled “rationalizations” about six ways.
Did you notice that another tag yesterday was “Rosei O’Donnel”?
I am glad that you wrote about this because it is a very good example of bullshit; the disregard of truth to advance an agenda, Much of what passes for political speech in America is bullshit.
To be fair, a cursory reading of the email makes it seem like she is indeed saying she hates everyday Americans. Call it a reading comprehension mistake. Not that that excuses the spin.
I had a conservative friend point this out to me and immediately show that it was a non-issue, they’re just talking about word use, not a big deal, nothing to get mad over, etc.
Meanwhile my facebook feed fills up with comments from my liberal friends acting like they’re going to die because “Trump Jr. compared PEOPLE to CANDY!!!!” Not to mention those hilariously moronic NBC debate “fact checks.”
Well, yes, but before a blogger sends out a “bombshell” post, a more than cursory reading is ethically mandatory.
In my previous job you wrote emails as if they were going to be read by the world, because stupid stuff like this (missing quotes) will be creatively misinterpreted if the thing ever goes public. This is a tech company (a big one) and I can assure every single engineer writes more readable emails than Podesta’s leaked one. If I were a politician and had an advisor writing like that he’d get one warning and be fired on the spot the next time I see something I need to read twice before understanding what it meant (and the example above is one).
If people whose job is communicating can’t be better at it than people who are stereotipically assumed to be horrible communicators something is wrong with the world.