{"id":6346,"date":"2015-02-28T10:55:16","date_gmt":"2015-02-28T16:55:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/?p=6346"},"modified":"2015-02-28T11:16:35","modified_gmt":"2015-02-28T17:16:35","slug":"politifact-and-kevin-williamson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/2015\/02\/politifact-and-kevin-williamson\/","title":{"rendered":"Politifact and Kevin Williamson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Williamson\u00a0 – a writing role model for essayists.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nPolitifact and Me<\/a>
\n Intellectual dishonesty among the \u2018fact-checkers\u2019<\/a>
\n By Kevin D. Williamson \u2014 February 25, 2015<\/a><\/h5>\n

Politifact, which is published under the flag of the Tampa Bay Times<\/em>, the chief executive of which, Paul Tash, is the chairman of the Poynter Institute, a member of the Pulitzer prize committee, and a disgrace to his trade, recently decided to \u201cfact-check\u201d my colleague Jonah Goldberg, but it was really fact-checking me, as Jonah was citing a claim in a column of mine.<\/p>\n

The claim is a straightforward one: That under the so-called Affordable Care Act, the federal government will recognize and subsidize a great deal of hokum, things like naturopathic medicine and acupuncture that have no scientific basis, that have been clinically shown to be useless or worse, and that are rooted in rank mysticism, from the \u201cqi\u201d energy that acupuncturists claim to manipulate\u2014and which does not, technically speaking, exist<\/em>\u2014to the \u201cinnate intelligence\u201d underpinning chiropractic theory<\/a>\u2014which\u00a0does not, in fact, exist, <\/em>either. As endless peer-reviewed scientific studies document, this stuff is pure quackery, but it is, thanks to the Affordable Care Act and the focused exertions of former Iowa Senator Tom Harkin\u2014one of those Democrats who really love science we\u2019re always hearing about\u2014it is hokum with increasing official status. Senator Harkin successfully campaigned for ACA provisions that would forbid \u201cdiscrimination\u201d against any practitioner of purported healing arts who is licensed. Many states, California prominent among them (quelle surprise!<\/em>) license practitioners of superstitious hokum, including naturopathic \u201cdoctors\u201d and acupuncturists. There are many reasons for this: One is that superstitious hokum is extraordinarily popular, and the state desires to keep an eye on its practitioners; a second is that California is, as advertised, full of lunatics and the entrepreneurs who service their lunacy; the third is that reasons Nos. 1 and 2 combine to generate revenue for the state, which will\u2014in what must be the most perfect example of progressivism in practice\u2014yank your license to practice medically null but voguish Eastern mysticism in the state of California for failure to pay your crushing California taxes. I once encountered a Whole Foods with a yoga studio inside it, and thought that if one could only get Chris Hayes to broadcast from there (there\u2019s still time, Chris!) it would have constituted a\u00a0turducken of lifestyle liberalism upon which there would be no improving, but losing your California acupuncturist\u2019s license to the Sacramento taxman surely surpasses that.<\/p>\n

If you are wondering where the fact-checking comes in for all of that, you\u2019re going to keep wondering. Politifact doubly embarrassed itself on the issue, first with the risibly sloppy and shockingly (if you don\u2019t know very many reporters) lazy reporting habits of Louis Jacobson, who wrote that neither Jonah nor I had \u201creturned inquiries,\u201d by which he means to say responded to them. He tried to contact Jonah by sending a single email to a rarely used public account, and me he tried to contact\u2014if you can call it that\u2014by tweeting that he was fact-checking something. I do not follow him on Twitter, having been contentedly unaware of his existence, and I do not follow Politifact, for that matter. I am not sure that what Jacobson did constituted an \u201cinquiry\u201d at all, but I am sure that it does not constitute \u201cinquiries.\u201d When I pointed this out\u2014and noted that National Review<\/span> is in the telephone directory and has been since the Eisenhower administration, that we employ an energetic young man to answer the telephones, that my email address is obtainable from the web site, that National Review <\/span>retains the services of various publicists and whatnot for the purpose of connecting its writers with media figures, etc.\u2014\u201cpick up the goddamned telephone,\u201d in short\u2014Jacobson responded in an odd way: by sending the same email again to Jonah the next morning, long after the piece had been published. His editor, the feckless, gormless, and in any intelligent world unemployable Angie Holan, noting the general mockery and merriment that my complaints about Politifact\u2019s practices produced on Twitter and elsewhere, very quickly found a way to get in touch with me\u2014turns out that it\u2019s not that hard!\u2014and asked for a telephone conversation, which I declined, having nothing to say to the intellectually dishonest, the cretinous, or the servile, except in those cases in which I am matched with such on cable-news panels. (Hello, Sally.)<\/p>\n

Politifact later apologized for Jacobson\u2019s reportorial slobbery\u2014though not for the fact that he lied<\/em> about it; \u201cinquiries,\u201d indeed\u2014but stood by its rating of the piece in question: \u201chalf true.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why half? That, the second part of Politifact\u2019s self-beclownment, remains a mystery. Politifact concedes the actual facts of the case\u2014\u201cstipulates that as long as an alternative-medicine practitioner is fully licensed by a state, insurance companies must reimburse them just as they do medical doctors,\u201d etc.\u2014but goes on to add that not much money is going to the cause of advancing pseudoscientific hokum, that bureaucratic \u201cguidance\u201d is not as enthusiastic as some practitioners of these allegedly healing arts would like, that some aspects of the law amount mainly to \u201csymbolism,\u201d (which is not, as Jonah points out in his own response, actually true<\/a>) etc. Which is to say, it disputes claims that neither Jonah nor I made: Neither of us wrote or implied that a main purpose or a major spending priority of the ACA involved homeopathy. This is one of those \u201ccontext\u201d things that people who do not wish to admit the truth like to talk about. The point is that you could be sure that if similar concessions were made to pseudoscientific hokum less popular among Democrats\u2013intelligent design, for example, or various kinds of gay-conversion therapies\u2013the response would be loud, long, and heavy on the theme of Republicans\u2019 hating and distrusting science. When a nobody Republican state legislator in Idaho says something stupid about female anatomy, it\u2019s national news and an indicator of the Republicans\u2019 corporate disregard for science. Democrats actually write recognition of and subsidies for unscientific mysticism into a law\u2013the most important law they have passed this century\u2013and the news media have approximately squat to say about it.<\/p>\n

So of course Politifact ignored the actual context of the piece in question: demands that Scott Walker answer questions about his opinions on evolution. My point\u2014which I have made repeatedly\u2014is that progressives mainly like to talk about science when it can be used as a cudgel for their moral program (regarding homosexuality, for example) or when it can be used to annoy or embarrass conservative Christians, some of whom have boobish attitudes about evolution. Notably, Politifact omitted all consideration of the most important part of my criticism: that the things we will be recognizing and subsidizing have zero basis in science. Subsidies for homeopathy would be an entirely different question if homeopathy were not bogus. But it is. This, the most important aspect of the question, Politifact ignores, instead choosing to focus on ACA marginalia that neither Jonah nor I even addressed. This is a variation on the classical straw-man argument: There is no question about the facts that I presented, but holes can be punched in other arguments\u2014never mind that I did not make those arguments.<\/p>\n

Again, I point out that this goes on under the flag of the Tampa Bay Times<\/em>, a highly regarded newspaper. Having spent most of my adult life editing newspapers, I care about them, even the ones to which I have no direct connection. What is going on under the watch of Paul Tash and Angie Holan is intellectual dishonesty. It is obvious intellectual dishonesty. It is undeniable intellectual dishonesty. All intelligent people recognize this. That intellectual dishonesty undermines the credibility not only of Paul Tash\u2019s\u00a0mentally flaccid operation but of newspapers categorically, which is one of the reasons I object so strongly to it. (I will be giving a speech on intellectual dishonesty in a few weeks at Hillsdale, where I am teaching a seminar in which I will instruct students how not to be embarrassing buffoons such as Louis Jacobson, Angie Holan, the editors of Rolling Stone<\/em>, et al.) Newspapers have very little capital other than their reputations\u2014a press, a building, and a distribution network can become worthless with shocking speed in the absence of institutional credibility.<\/p>\n

One way to ruin a newspaper\u2019s reputation is to make the news subservient to politics, which is what has happened at Politifact. The Obama administration is dear to Democrats, and the ACA, being threatened from several directions at once, is something that Democrats and so-called liberals feel the need to defend. Politifact, and by extension the Tampa Bay Times <\/em>and the Poynter Institute (which owns the newspaper), is deploying rank and obvious intellectual dishonesty in the service of narrow, partisan political sympathies. It is detestable, and it deserves to be condemned by all those who care about newspapers\u2014not only by the conservatives against whom its intellectual dishonesty is directed.<\/p>\n

For the record, I made no attempt at all to contact Paul Tash, Angie Holan, or Louis Jacobson before writing this. I cannot imagine that any one of them has anything of any interest to add on this or any subject, and my capacity for enduring lies and stupidity is not unlimited.<\/p>\n

The insensitivity just drips from the page. You can practically see it flow into a tidal wave of Leftist umbrage. The Left will take offense whether or not it’s given, but Williamson’s writing could push some Leftists into catatonic excitation, defined by Wiki as a state of constant purposeless agitation and excitation. And how great is that!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Williamson\u00a0 – a writing role model for essayists. Politifact and Me Intellectual dishonesty among the \u2018fact-checkers\u2019 By Kevin D. Williamson \u2014 February 25, 2015 Politifact, which is published under the flag of the Tampa Bay Times, the chief executive of which, Paul Tash, is the chairman of the Poynter Institute, a member of the Pulitzer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[299],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6346","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-literature","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6346"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6353,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6346\/revisions\/6353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}