John Avlon, writing today for CNN.com, gives a comical overview of the reaction to Sen.Jon Kyl’s lie about Planned Parenthood. (If you’re unfamiliar with the incident, you can click  here .) Comedian Steven Colbert seized the opportunity and created aTwitter sensation.
Avlon, who is among the nation’s best at popping the bubble of the blowhards on the left and the right, wrote an absolute gem of a column about the larger story behind the “not intended to be factual” fiasco.
Avlon responded to Kyl’s follies this way:
“We’re heading to a strange place where (the late Sen.) Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s truism ‘everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts’ no longer applies.
“Exhibit B this week: Donald Trump’s re-enflaming of the thoroughly discredited birther conspiracy theory. When he repeats this falsehood in interviews, he is too often treated as a man with an unorthodox opinion, not someone repeating a lie on national television.
“As a result, more people are duped and the country more divided, not on the many rational reasons to oppose President Obama’s policy agenda but on paranoid fantasies cut out of whole cloth.
“Perhaps not surprisingly, a man responsible for pushing the birther myth — and a reported recent Trump adviser — Joe Farah of the fringe website World Net Daily freely admitted to Salon.com this week that his site publishes ‘some misinformation.’”
“’Misinformation’” is a fancy word for lying with an ideological agenda in mind. It has become more acceptable and more influential with the rise of partisan media. It preys on the gullible and the stupid and the ditto-head alike.
“The cycle of incitement that afflicts our politics ensures that this dynamic bleeds into both sides of the aisle. For example, the liberal Campaign for America’s Future recently declared that ‘Congressman Eric Cantor wants to eliminate Social Security,’ a flat-out ‘Pants on Fire’ lie, as described by indispensable PolitiFact.
“A little-noticed local example of this strangeness caught my eye this week, courtesy of the web site ThinkProgress. It seems that Texas state Rep. Leo Berman has introduced a bill to ban (Islamic) sharia law in the Lone Star State.
“When he was asked why such a step was necessary, he cited the city of Dearborn, Michigan, six times in testimony: ‘It’s being done in Dearborn, Michigan … because of a large population of Middle Easterners. The judges in Dearborn are using and allowing to be used sharia law.’
“This would indeed be troubling (and unconstitutional) if true, but when Berman was pressed about the source of his facts, here’s what he said: “I heard it on a radio station here on my way in to the Capitol one day. … I don’t know Dearborn, Michigan, but I heard it on the radio. Isn’t that true?”
“No, it’s not, as Dearborn Mayor Jack O’Reilly has been forced to make abundantly clear, stating that ‘these people know nothing of Dearborn, and they just seek to provoke and enflame their base for political gain.’
“But the misinformation percolating around the fringes of hyper-partisan media is creeping into state capitals and the U.S. Congress. Ignorance and incitement begin to blur, compounded by the civic laziness of speakers who don’t care to fact-check.
“’Not intended to be a factual statement’ is an instant dark classic, a triumph of cynicism, capturing the essence of (columnist) Michael Kinsley’s definition of a gaffe in Washington: when a politician accidentally tells the truth.
“No wonder ‘people are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke,’ as Will Rogers once said and Colbert increasingly embodies. But we can’t keep depending on comedians to be the voices of sanity.
“And don’t be fooled. There are real costs to this careless courtship of the lowest common denominator. Without fact-based debates, politics can quickly give way to paranoia and hate. Our democracy gets degraded.
“Americans deserve better, and we should demand better, especially from our elected representatives. Empowering ignorance for political gain is unacceptable.”