'Tis the jolly season of Santa Claus, with fantasies of sugar plums dancing all about, so it seems appropriate that we Lowdowners kick back and take time in this issue to sift through a vast treasure trove of the political fantasies that have become such an integral part of America's public discourse. I'm talking about the many urban legends that constantly rip through the body politic. Usually generated by partisans of both parties, special interest groups, corporate think tanks, lobbyists, front groups, and PR flacks, they're picked up and repeated endlessly as "true" by talk-radio yakkers, cable TV pundits, bloggers, internet chatterers, and even the self-proclaimed "legitimate" media.
A few of these legends actually are true, and some start with a germ of truth that quickly becomes overwhelmed with creative elaboration, but most are simply myths, fabrications, fibs, propaganda, distortions, outright lies, or orchestrated B.S. Some grow powerful enough to affect an entire election (the Karl Rove-inspired claim by a front group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, that John Kerry did not earn his war medals and possibly was a coward). Some are enormous enough to bamboozle Congress and the public into supporting disastrous public policies (the Bushites' bogus insistence that Ol' Saddam Hussein was about to whap us with weapons of mass destruction). And some are just innocent fun and silliness (the internet rumor after the 2000 electoral debacle in Florida that in the seventh century St. Chad of Northumbria was proclaimed the patron saint of disputed elections—a bit of spoofery inspired not only by Chad's name but also by the fact that he had momentarily been installed as the Bishop of York, only to be deposed shortly afterward because of a dispute over the legitimacy of his consecration).
Here, then, is our holiday offering of some "True or False" urban legends from our political world, including several that you'll be hearing repeated with growing volume and frequency in the New Year. We mix the serious with the lighthearted.
George W was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Incredible, but true...sort of. The self-declared "war president" was among 156 people in the world whose names were on the list considered by the Norwegian Nobel committee in 2002. (Tony Blair was another; no report on whether Saddam or Osama made the list.) Meanwhile, Jimmy Carter was the deserving one who bagged the Peace Prize that year.
John Edwards caused America's current shortage of flu vaccine.
Uh-uh. This charge ricocheted across the internet late in this year's election in an effort to tag Edwards as an ambulance-chasing trial lawyer who sued a U.S. vaccine manufacturer in the 1980s and won a $5 million jury award. Thus, goes this right-wing screed, American drug companies were forced by Edwards' "frivolous" lawsuit to quit making flu vaccines.
Wrong. U.S. companies abandoned the market because they were not reaping the profit margins they wanted. ... [ read more ]
Help us out by throwing some cash in the bucket:
By gollies, when the economic going gets tough for America's workaday people, you can always count on our tough-minded political leaders to get going! Get going, as in: rush like hell to find some gimmick to make it look like they're doing something without actually, you know, doing anything.
