A $2-billion lie

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Mike Thompson-There’s a difference between hyperbole and lying. Political commentators will often engage in hyperbole to make a point. Yet it’s always the truth that’s being exaggerated - or at least that should be the case. As the political right in America and their benefactors have assembled an enormous noise machine via the takeover of the public airwaves, political debate has shifted from exaggerations of the truth to outright fabrications of the truth. The latest example of this is the lie about President Barack Obama’s trip to Asia costing taxpayers $200 million per day.


The story, according to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, originated in India and was based on a quote by an alleged Indian provincial official. Never mind the laughable notion that a low-level bureaucrat in India has the inside scoop on details of the president’s trip that are being kept top secret for security reasons. A media outlet of unknown reliability somewhere in India used an anonymous quote, so it’s gold to conservative wags who've began spreading the false claim that total tab for the president's official trip will be $2 billion . Since then, conservative pundits from Rush Limbaugh to Glenn Beck have picked up the lie and run with it. Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachman of Minnesota regurgitated the lie on Cooper’s show.


Even after the lie had been exposed, conservative pundits simply shifted to spreading cleverly worded, toned-down versions of the lie. These conservative pundits and politicians are smart enough to know they’re lying. Yet they repeat the lie because the objective is to construct a caricature of Obama and then beat down the caricature they’ve constructed. I have no problem with caricatures as long as they’re accurate. However, there’s a reason political cartoonists didn’t depict former President Bill Clinton as the apex of marital fidelity, or depict former President George W. Bush as a having opposed the war in Iraq. It's one thing craft a caricature of someone on the basis of something they've actually said or done; it's another thing to fabricate the truth and then attack someone on the basis of your fabrication.


As Cooper said, “There’s a lot of reasons to oppose this president, and there’s a lot of ways our government wastes money. No one needs to make up any stuff, or spread false stories about false waste,” Cooper told his viewers. Yet making up stuff is precisely the strategy the political right has been using on everything from health care reform to Obama’s foreign visit (my words, not his).

http://www.freep.com/article/20101109/BLOG24/101108053/A-2-billion-lie