manufacturing reality, the MSM at work

[Warren Stupidity]

As we all learned on Sunday evening 72% of iraqi voters turned out to vote. Or did they? 72% of what? Eligible voters? Registered voters? 72% of some number we just made up?

Once the 72% number was drilled into the public mind, the MSM moved rapidly onto 'its a glorious victory for freemon and moxy' all of course leading up to the revolting blue finger wagging spectacle at the SOTU, another Mission Accomplished moment. Later we learned that really the number was more like 57%.

Accompanying this bullshit, Monday we learned that 94% of registered expat Iraqis trotted out to their polling places across the planet. What we didn't learn until we read the fine print is that this represent 22% of eligible expats, that in fact the attempt to get out the expat vote (presumably to offset the theocrat vote inside Iraq,) was a colossal failure.

So to get to the point of this tirade, and I do have a point. I'm reading the online NYT today and there is an article about how the United Iraqi Alliance is trouncing allawi's party in the unofficial tally, but of course not to worry 'cause these are the good shiite theocrats not to be confused with those bad shiite theocrats over in Iran, blah blah blah. I'm reading this blather and there is the following paragraph:


On Sunday night, after polling sites closed, officials had estimated that 8 million of the country's 14.2 million eligible voters had cast ballots; that turnout would be approximately 57 percent. But they later backtracked, saying that the 8 million estimate had been reached hastily on the basis of telephone reports from polling stations across the country and that the figure could change.

First Iraqi Election Returns Show Commanding Lead for Shiites
By JOHN F. BURNS and DEXTER FILKINS

Published: February 3, 2005
(subscription required) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/03/international/middleeast/03cnd-iraq.html



OK, so its not 72, its 57. But wait, there's more. About that 57 number. Here I'll do the math: 8/14.2 = 0.5634. That number is not approximately 57, it is approximately 56, but heck who cares, it is just a number they pulled out of the air anyhow. And now they are guardedly letting us know that 57 or 56 or whatever is bullshit too.

The MSM is now breaking out in pimples of stories that reveal that the 'turnout' was not so good. As expected shiites and kurds in shiite and kurd safe areas did turn out in large numbers. But with 72 a fiction, 57 an overstatement, it is entirely possible that The Glorious Return of Freemon and Moxy To Arak did not draw voters in anywhere near the expectations. Most likely we will never know for sure.

Meanwhile in our manufactured reality the insurgents were defeated on sunday.



You have to give them credit, they are good at what they do. But what they do is lie and mislead and distort. What they are doing is fooling most of the people most of the time. They are selling us baked shit and we are loving it.

[CWebster]

1. Pretty good, but I don't know about "loving it".nt