January 03, 2012 01:50 AM UTC

Fact Free Politics: Latest installment (Updated)

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• by: JO

OK, class, let’s match the name with the number. The numbers below represent how many new jobs the Keystone XL pipeline is predicted to create… according to whom?

A.  20,000       1. John Boehner

B. 100,000      2. John Huntsman

C.   6,500        3. Keystone XL company

OK, we made it easy. The answers are A-1, B-2, and C-3.

Just one in a long, long series of examples of Fact Free Politics (nod to Chris Hedges for coining the term). Who’d a thunk that the Speaker of the House would make up a number, entirely fictitious, about the number of new jobs President Obama might not be creating if he hesitates to approve…much less vetoes…the XL Pipeline proposal? Would any serious candidate, much less a former ambassador to China and governor of Utah, exaggerate the number by a factor of SIXTEEN?

Well, in the latter case, yes; and in the case of Boehner, that’s just what he did. The estimate of how many temporary jobs would be created in construction of the pipeline should … and has … come from the company proposing to build the thing. In this case, 6,000 – 6,500.

The fact (if I may use that word in the context of governance, much less politics) is that our political dialogue has left the realm of Reality and entered the World of Make-Believe Entertainment. The latter is a world of mythology (“America Is Still Number One” … in what isn’t specified; “America Is the Land Where Anyone Can Make It, with Enough Gumption, Guts, and Grit!”, et cetera). And wild, wild lies (“Obama is a Marxist,” “Obama hates America and wants to turn it into a European socialist state where the gummit will tell you want you can eat for dinner and will take your chillun away from you at age 3 months to be turned into robots…”) … not mere misrepresentations, not mere forgetfulness (that’s Governor Oops), not mere confusion. Deliberate lies.

The emergence of unmediated media, e.g. blogs, facilitates the process, even as Old Tyme media news freely acknowledges (in the product) its final transformation into Early Entertainment, including tonight’s Warm and Cuddly Pix of kids looking happy after their parents both lose their jobs, and the house, and their savings, and their childrens’ futures….

And not just to pick on the Right, although they are the more egregious. How ’bout a candidate of “Hope” and “Change”? Didn’t happen, and ain’t gonna happen!

Addendum from Tuesday (Jan. 2) TPM’s Josh Marshall:

Mitt Romney is now repeatedly saying that he created a net 100,000 jobs in his tenure at Bain Capital. But there seems to be no evidence to substantiate this claim. In fact, in previous campaigns the Romney campaign has been pressed on this number and to the best of my knowledge never been able to offer any evidence.