David from Crooks and Liars wrote this post “reporting” that Mitt Romney is out of touch and offering as evidence the following video where Romney appears fascinated by a simple touch screen menu:
But watch the whole speech:
The context in the MSNBC version is gone. It’s a brand-new speech that makes Romney look really bad. And it’s a bald-faced lie.
It is not OK to make up lies and offer edited videos as proof of your lies (MSNBC). It’s also not ok to mindlessly repost those lies to your significant and impressionable audience (C&L) - especially when a good portion of your content is devoted to calling out FOX news for doing exactly the same thing.
A more honest use of the speech would be to find out if optometrists are truly required to complete a 33-page form to change their address.
That approach would have one of the following results:
- There would be no such form. In that case the story is: Mitt Romney is a liar.
- There would be such a form. In that case, Mitt Romney might have a point and this could be the perfect place to meet in the middle. Why is the form so long? Is 33 pages necessary? If not (and come on, who on the left or right is going to argue for a 33 page address change form?) then perhaps we can start a list of jumping off points so we can start working together for change.
- The third (and most likely) result is that Mitt heard an anecdote from a friend and used it in a speech without fact-checking. In that case the story is: Mitt’s staff is a team of barely competent nincompoops who don’t realize that speaking factually is more important than appearing casual, even for Mitt!
So there are at least three good stories in the truth, David, and numbers 1 and 3 nicely fit the “Republican’s are bad” narrative at C&L.
I wish you had approached the story from the perspective of telling the truth.
