Obama Lied When He Said He’d Been to 57 States!

by Little Miss Attila on November 22, 2009

What a lying liar!

Althouse:

I know Sullivan wants me to check out his list of “lies.” I picked one to check out, that she said the only flag in her office was the Israeli flag. As Sullivan himself notes, she must have meant to say the only foreign flag, since she did also have an Alaskan and an American flag in her office. That’s the sort of sloppy speaking that one would correct easily if it were pointed out at the time: “Of course, I also have the state flag and the American flag.” I mean, it would be pretty ridiculous for a state governor to only have a foreign flag! There isn’t even a motivation to lie.

That there’s no motivation here doesn’t mean it’s an “odd lie” — which is Sullivan’s term. It means it’s not a lie at all. What’s odd is his definition of a lie. If I said I was just wearing jeans to a party, you wouldn’t have exposed me as a liar if I turned up wearing a shirt and shoes as well. In fact, you’d sound like a dork — or, with good enough delivery, a comedian — if you said, “You liar. You said you were just wearing jeans!”

Calling something like this a lie marks you as someone who’s centered not on finding out what is true, but on destroying someone. It doesn’t motivate me to go through the rest of the long list systematically to see what each item is about, and it certainly doesn’t make me want to look at the list and accept the conclusion that wow, Sarah Palin really is a terrible liar.

Of course it doesn’t. It’s an unserious list, from an unserious writer whom the Atlantic continues to employ because its management can’t take their eyes off of his traffic meter, and they don’t want to admit that the reason he gets that traffic is because he’s an intellectual train wreck.

The Ann Althouse – Michelle Goldberg diavlog is at the link. I should watch it, but I’m a little bit scared. Last time I saw Goldberg get her ass kicked, it was by Megan McArdle, and it was a bit of a bloodbath. I hope she’s picked up some skillz since then, but . . . Althouse! I dunno if she was ready for that. I dunno if I’m ready to watch.

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