Playing dumb? Or just getting it wrong: On her eponymous program last night, Rachel Maddow explained how Mitt Romney bungled so badly on Tuesday night.
Why was Romney so sure that Obama hadn’t called the Benghazi killings an “act of terror?” What made the hopeful so certain?
Yesterday, we suggested that Romney got conned by a con. He had heard so much bullshit about Benghazi, he had come to believe it was right.
Last night, Maddow said something similar. But what she said was importantly wrong.
The corporate multimillionaire started by explaining an actual fact. It's true! Right-wing news orgs have pounded this story for a good solid month:
MADDOW (10/17/12): The way this story is told on the right is a story that tells conservatives exactly what they want to hear and what they wanted to believe about that bad, bad President Obama. A comforting story about how this bad president never used that word “terror” in talking about these attacks until two weeks that happened. This awful guy.That is correct. If you only consume conservative media, you mprobably think that Obama avoided referring to the killings as an act of terror.
I mean, that story must feel great if you’re a conservative, if you’re against this president. And if you only experience reality as mediated through the conservative media, you might think that is really what happened.
That is not what happened.
As Maddow continued, she speculated that this is what happened to Romney. Romney bungled because he believed the con in the right-wing press:
MADDOW: Mitt Romney, getting it wrong last night because he apparently consumes the right-wing version of reality instead of the real reality outside the right wing conservative media bubble, that was the story of the night when he face planted on that story. Just a shocking, stylistic, and substantive face plant by an excitable candidate who decided to take a leaping, round house punch while his opponent was standing there at his most presidential.That's what we said, with one huge difference. At this point, you get a choice:
And the guy taking the punch not only missed his target, he punched himself out in the process, splat. That was the story of last night.
Maddow simply doesn’t get it.
Maddow is playing it dumb.
It’s true! If you watch Fox, you probably think that Obama and the administration played games with this topic. But guess what, crackers?
Voters are also hearing that right-wing narrative all over the mainstream press too! Many major mainstream new orgs have purchased the RNC line.
Does Maddow not understand that fact? Or is she just playing it dumb? It's safer to blame the right-wing press. Plus it makes viewers feel good!
Two days ago, the Washington Post did a disgraceful front-page report, attacking Susan Rice on this score. We suggested that Maddow wouldn’t speak up.
You may have thought we were wrong.
This remains a very dangerous issue for Obama’s re-election. Romney’s bungle at the debate was a huge political gift. But this topic remains very dangerous.
In a less dishonest world, liberals would be setting the record straight about Susan Rice and Obama. They’d be correcting the big mainstream orgs which are pushing the RNC line.
We told you Maddow wouldn’t do that! Will you ever admit that we’re right?
I think both you and Maddow agree more than you think, and here is where you both go off track:
ReplyDeleteIf you accept the notion that Romney is the victim of some sort of "con," then don't you also wonder about a candidate for president of the United States who is so easily fooled by (take your pick) the right-wing echo chamber and/or the mainstream media?
And so easily fooled that he makes an ass of himself on national TV repeating it?
Dude doesn't "wonder" about Romney: Somerby thinks his plans are stone-cold crazy.
DeleteSo, there's that.
But yes, is it ever possible the comments section of this blog will wonder:
Is Somerby right about Maddow? Is he right about the liberal and mainstream press?
Well, how do you explain "stone-cold crazy" when every single time someone thinks they got a handle on the latest version and tries to explain it, the "stone-cold crazy" person offering the plan simply says that's what he never said, and comes up with yet a new plan or wrinkle? This week it's the magic "pick-a-number" deduction cap, in which taxpayers themselves are forced to choose which deductions to take, and which are taken away from them?
DeleteSecondly, Maddow comment last night was about how "mainstream media" so-called "fact-checkers" are aiding and abetting an alternate reality in which the president never said Benghazi was an act of terror when he called it an act of terror in his first staement about Benghazi the day after Benghazi.
Maddow clearly denounced the "moral relevancy" game in which "fact-checkers" bend over backwards to say both sides aren't telling Gospel truth by bringing up the Rice BS again.
This allows the right wing to build their own alternate reality even when the truth is biting them in the hindquarters.
One would think that the Somerby analysts would have sprung from their chairs cheering at this, since it is what Somerby has been railing about for 13 years.
But no, it was spoken by Rachel Maddow, "our own Rhodes scholar." So it can't be anywhere close to true.
Bingo!
DeleteSo, Somerby's right about this -- but more importantly, he's wrong about the thing he hasn't said anything about?
DeleteAnd you wonder why you're thought of as the reflexive Somerby-hater...
You ought to try watching Maddow sometime before Somerby tells you what she said. But then again, that would require independent evaluation and analysis.
DeleteHaha
DeleteThe Daily Howler overreached here in a way not far from Romney's , and his comment page correctly calls him out. Well done. But his general point about "it's not just Fox" is correct.
ReplyDeleteOf course, but "it's not just Fox" was also Maddow's point when she spoke of so-called mainstream media "fact-checkers".
Delete