Tom Toles is a Priceless National Treasure, Part XIV
Via the overworked Tom Bozzo, who I keep hoping will post here about Ford’s plan to triple their Electric Car output for next year, Tom Toles Explains It All to You:
Oh the transgression was bad, but we the proud and truth-loving American public just cannot abide the lies! We are TRUTH-SEEKERS around here, and we punish the lying liars where they are found!
Except Tim Pawlenty when he says that he will fix the budget with MORE, HUGER THAN EVER tax cuts! Just like Bush’s only BIGGER! But THIS TIME they will pay for themselves! This will not be punished as a crazed lie, no, this will be reported straight-faced as a POLICY POSITION. And Pawlenty is running as the GUY WHO WILL TELL US HARD TRUTHS!
Journalists apparently understand that calling an underwear model shot “a penis” will get more links, which is their sole purpose in life, but actually noticing a lie that would impact people who are supposed to make rational decisions will lose them a key source who then takes the opportunity to lie to them with impunity and anonymity.
Note: If I Were Brad DeLong, I would be calling this series (which reveals my innumeracy, unless Google just can’t find entries 11 and 12) “Why Oh Why Can’t We Just Have the Good Part of the Press Corps?” Sadly, I’m not that clever, so it would be something like “Reasons to Be Cheerful…” There’s a reason he’s a Syndicated Columnist and I’m a blogger.
Does the Washington Post think that it indemnifies itself against its own cynical ‘objective’ reporting by running things like this Toles rant in its online version? Has the Washington Post undertaken to explain how the tired claim of Pawlenty — “cutting taxes raises revenue” — is without substance? Does the Post itself always call out this claim for the lie it is, every time it quotes some Republican saying it? No, it doesn’t. And the Post rather fancies itself as a HARD TRUTH TELLER itself. Maybe Tom Toles should bite the hand that feeds him a bit more.