Bare faced lies with a you betcha smile

The Daily Dish has an interesting compilation of the many bare-faced lies told by Sarah Palin during her political career. It never ceases to amaze me how brazenly some politicians will simply lie even over pretty easily checkable claims, from relatively small ones about meetings right up to fabricated justifications for wars. And I'm always depressed how many supporters continue to believe in these duplicitous toads even when they have been caught out time after time lying to the public, a sad indicator of the fact that many voters are indeed just as stupid as these lying politicians obviously think they are. (via Boing Boing)

"Palin lied when she claimed that Alaska has spent "millions of dollars" on litigation related to her ethics complaints; in fact, that figure is much, much lower, and she had initiated the most expensive inquiry.



Palin lied when she denied that the Alaska Independence Party supports secession and denied that her husband had been a member; in fact, even the McCain campaign noted that the party's very existence is based on secession and that Todd was a member for seven years."

Truth and lies and videotape

The BBC admits a trailer for a programme on the queen was re-edited to give the wrong impression, TV phone in quizzes turn out to be falsified and fraudulent, Discovery has admitted that Bear Grylls' survival programmes aren't as authentic as they seem, he often sleeps in a nice motel and not under some desert rock with a lizard as we thought (personally I was more pissed off with seeing him killing a frog by biting its head off to then eat it. Survival trick maybe, but killing an animal like that isn't necessary for a bloody TV programme, is it?)

... Gee, guess what? TV isn't real! Even reality shows aren't real. So why are we surprised? Yes, they were attempted to create a misleading impression, but all texts, every single text any person creates, from a simple photograph to a TV programme or film is informed by choices about how it is structured to give a particular impression, consciously or unconsciously; in media studies it is referred to as the paradigmatic and syntagmatic elements of the text, the selection and combination of elements desired to give a certain effect. The big surprise here is that anyone is really surprised that even factual programmes aren't the solid, objective, truthful beam of light we might like to think. Everything is edited, everything even before being edited was decided to be shot in a certain way with certain light with certain people, places... What you see is only half the story at best and if a lot of folks have forgotten that - as it seems from the surprise - then it is a good lesson to relearn. Mind you, it does make you think about how we decide to base our opinions on anything and also consider just what is truth and what is real?