You'd think MSNBC's resident brainiac would know better than to engage in the very thing she condemns in others.
Apparently this ethical tenet understood by most children is beyond Rachel Maddow's grasp as she demonstrated once again on her cable show last night. (video, audio clips after page break)
Maddow was criticizing Mitt Romney's claim that an independent inspector general concluded that money from the failed solar company Solyndra was diverted by the Obama administration to friends, family and campaign donors (video link) --
MADDOW: On Thursday on this show, the Republican Party's presidential nominee, I let you know, had told a whopper, a big fat easily disprovable lie, a stated fact that you could check in the world to see if it was true. He opened up his mouth on Thursday afternoon and he lied about it. He did that Thursday afternoon. Thursday night, we devoted a significant portion of this show to a hand-wringing, all-caps, sweaty, emphatic, aggravation that nobody was calling him on this. Shouldn't this be a big story that the guy lied? I mean, he is running for president, for pete sake, and he is lying. And it's really checkable, it's not even a close one, it is black and white, it's a lie. Why is nobody covering it?
ROMNEY (speaking outside Solyndra on May 31): An independent inspector general looked at this investment and concluded that the administration had steered money to friends and family, to campaign contributors.
MADDOW (on her May 31 show): That is not true. An inspector general did not look into the investment in Solyndra and conclude that the administration had steered money to friends and family. That did not happen. That is a lie. ... He said something was concluded by an inspector general that was never concluded by an inspector general. It's not true. That seems important given that he's running for president. ... Don't you think the candidate telling a big, blatant lie in the middle of the news cycle deserves a little follow up?
MADDOW (back to last night's show): Yes, it does deserve follow up -- and it got some! Praise be, this is great news about the news. Since my plaintive cry here on Thursday night, news organizations have actually been fact-checking Mitt Romney's statement and calling it what it was. They are calling it a lie.
Maddow cited stories from the Associated Press, Chicago Tribune, Jake Tapper at ABC News, FactCheck.org and Fortune all challenging Romney's claim about the Solyndra inspector general, Maddow then adding this triumphantly --
MADDOW: I was wrong! Hurrah! Presidential candidate utters big, fat, checkable lie on the campaign trail. News organizations check it and call him on the big fat lie. That is what's supposed to happen and it is happening. I was wrong that it wouldn't happen. It happened, great news.
Turns out that elsewhere in the same show last night, Maddow cut loose with -- how should I put this? -- a big, fat, easily checkable lie. A whopper, you might say, the thing she so despises when Romney does it. For some odd reason Maddow is unwilling to apply such a high standard to herself, lest the mirror crack.
Here she is saying this about polling for today's recall election in Wisconsin (see video embedded in post) --
And I know the world is not paying attention to (Wisconsin GOP state senator) Dale Schultz (just praised by Maddow for his willingness to reach across the aisle) right now. The world wants to talk about the recall election of Gov. Scott Walker, the effort by Democrat Tom Barrett to replace Walker before the end of his first term as a governor. No poll since April has put Tom Barrett ahead of Scott Walker. But no poll has put Scott Walker above 50 percent at all!
Right -- except for the WeAskAmerica poll on May 13 showing Walker at 52 percent, Barrett at 43.
And another WeAskAmerica poll ten days later showing Walker with 54 percent, Barrett at 42.
Followed by a Marquette poll from May 23-26 that put Walker over Barrett by 7, 52-45.
Continuing into June with another WeAskAmerica poll giving Walker another 12-point lead as of Sunday, 54-42. All four poll results (and a dozen others stretching back to August) as reported at RealClearPolitics.
To make matters worse, Maddow lied about something else last night -- the Lily Ledbetter Act, the first bill signed by Obama in 2009. While describing Romney's fence-sitting on companion legislation called the Paycheck Fairness Act, Maddow said this about the Ledbetter law (audio) --
... The law that gives women access to the courts to sue if they're paid less than men for doing the same work.
Wrong -- access to the courts for women alleging unequal compensation was well in place for more than four decades before Ledbetter was enacted, thanks to the Equal Pay Act in 1963 and the Civil Rights Act a year later. The Ledbetter law pertains to the statute of limitations for suing and did not create the avenue for legal redress that already existed.
Maddow's devotion to facts "borders on obsessive," or so she claimed in the most laughable MSNBC promo ever (last part of video embedded here). We're also told ad nauseum how she's one of the smartest people on TV. Since bogus claims from Maddow can't be attributed to ignorance or shabby reporting, what other explanation is there but deception?
