Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Slander and Dishonesty on the Left

I hold no candle for Michele Bachmann, but I loathe slander and dishonesty in reporting, and I like it even less when my side does it than I do when the other side does. The discussion regarding the money that Bachmann receives from the government, as Lawrence O’Donnell puts it “in the form of socialism,” is turning more and more dishonest and more and more ugly.

Bachmann explained that the federal money received by her husband’s clinic was a grant for the purpose of training the clinic’s employees, and the farm is owned by her parents, but in any case there is hardly anything unique about politicians preaching against federal spending and then slurping at the federal trough. Everyone presently running for President could be found to be doing precisely the same thing, so if we’re going to insist on financial purity we’re going to be without a president after 2012.

Apparently liberals bought her explanations, because they went looking for more, and have discovered that her husband’s clinic has “received $137,000 in Medicaid funds over the last five years.” That means his clinic has treated patients who were on Medicaid, and was paid by Medicaid for doing so. Using the passive “has received” implies that he received the money free, for doing nothing. He treated people who needed help, and received payment for doing so. Are they suggesting that he should have turned them away, refused to help them, because he won’t accept government money?

Then Lawrence O’Donnell took himself into Rush Limbaugh territory. After Michael Isikoff finished explaining how Dr. Bachmann’s clinic “has received” money from Medicaid, O’Donnell launched into an explanation about how “of course” Medicare fraud occurs almost entirely in this type of clinic, not in mega-corporations, but in “small clinics such as this one,” and asks if Dr. Bachmann is going to be the subject of an investigation for fraud.

There has never been the slightest indication the Dr, Bachmann’s clinic has been involved with or investigated for fraud of any sort, and not only does O’Donnell make slanderous implication by asking the question, but he couples the question with a lengthy editorial statement about the type of clinic being the main perpetrator of fraud, an accusation for which he provides no supporting evidence whatever.

This is our bastion of liberal journalism. This is our counter to the lies and innuendo of conservative media. Slander and dishonesty to counter slander and dishonesty.

1 comment:

  1. MSM and Fox? Same thing. Both "news organizations" practice dishonest journalism.

    ReplyDelete