Posted 11:27 PM by Scoobie Davis

Robert Bartley's Big Lies
Not surprisingly the Wall Street Journal's Robert Bartley writes another blistering attack on Democrats that is long on vitriol but short on facts.

Where to start? I just want to devote time and space to some of the more egregious errors.
1) Bartley repeats the lie that "[u]ltimately Mr. Bush won all of the official recounts, and later also nearly all the media-conducted reconstructions." REALITY: Although the supposedly liberal media buried it in their accounts of the media studies of the vote, the media studies concluded that if the votes had been counted in accordance with state law that required that ballots with clearly discernible votes to be counted, then Gore would have won Florida. This was the finding even after tens of thousands of voters, mostly minorities, were wrongly disenfranchised by being tarred as felons (read the disgusting acoount of the Bush/Harris latter-day Jim Crow revival here; Harry Belafonte is correct).

2)According to Bartley:

In the Montana Senate race, Republican Mike Taylor dropped out, charging that a Democratic ad insinuated that he was homosexual. Some 20 years ago he promoted beauty products on TV, and a clip showed him in flamboyant clothes and patting a man's face. Democrats claim the ad was about financial improprieties at his beauty school, but on his pro-gay Web site Andrew Sullivan, citing the music and tagline, concludes "I'm sorry, this was gay-baiting." It would be a scandal if run by a Republican against a Democrat, he adds, "But because it's a Democratic ad, it's a non-story."

REALITY: Bartley is full of it. The ad dealt with improprieties with Taylor's business during the 1980's. It's a television comercial; Duh, accordingly, it usually makes sense to provide a visual aid. The visual aid was a television bit Taylor himself produced of himself. When I saw the ad, I didn't think it presented Taylor as gay; I thought it presented him as a shady businessman. So Andrew Sullivan cited the music and tagline to conclude it was gay-baiting. Who cares what a hack like Sullivan thinks? The music was funky, not gay (actually I have no idea what gay music sounds like; could someone help me out with this one?). The tagline dealt with the business issue. Talk about PC fascism. Portraying one's opponent in a negative light isn't gaybashing--it's politics.

UPDATE: Addendum here.