Now, to ruin a good meme
The blogosphere is abuzz with the meme that Newsweek lied, people died. Sure, it’s catchy and all but it’s inaccurate. The more appropriate meme would be Newsweek used an unreliable source and people died.
It is quite sad that Newsweek’s defense consists of saying they couldn’t verify it was untrue.
May 16th, 2005 at 11:50 am
The biggest mistake anyone has made is considering Newsweek to be an actual source of worthwhile information or journalistic integrity, and that goes double for the idiots killing people over it.
May 16th, 2005 at 1:11 pm
Considering I used that headline, I’ll defend it. It’s more of a tit for tat thing. Bush didn’t lie either, he merely used an unreliable source and people died. Nonetheless, the anti-s have pushed the ‘Bush Lied, People Died’ slogan ad nauseum.
It’s my way of fighting fire with fire.
May 16th, 2005 at 1:12 pm
Sinking to their level, if you will.
May 16th, 2005 at 1:37 pm
Most of the actual, verifiable, “oh my god i can’t believe he just said that thing that isn’t true” lies came from Cheney and Rumsfeld rather than Bush.
May 16th, 2005 at 4:27 pm
Ummmm… It sounds appropriate to me. It seems to be a perfect turnaround of the Left’s meme… Yeah, their meme is inappropriate, so maybe you have a point. It wasn’t Bush who lied (resulting in death & destruction) – it was SADDAM who lied. When someone lies to you for 12 years, how can you trust anything they say?
I always thought the Left looked idiotic with that meme.. If a weatherman tells you it’ll be sunny and it rains, do you chant “Weatherman Lied, People not dry!”
But couldn’t your phrase Newsweek used an unreliable source and people died. be changed (accurately) to The CIA used an unreliable source and people died.?
May 16th, 2005 at 4:33 pm
I don’t disagree other than that the meme is inaccurate.
May 16th, 2005 at 4:37 pm
Maybe “lied” overstates what Bush & Co did, maybe not. It all depends on whether trumping up claims, cherry-picking evidence, and grossly exaggerating your certitude constitute “lying.”
IMO, Newsweek didn’t “lie” about anything not because I think they didn’t screw up — obviously they did — but because I don’t see any intent to deceive. Whereas you need look no further than the administration’s constant harping about September 11 and al-Qaeda in the leadup to the Iraq invasion to see that they clearly intended to deceive at least as to the motivation for going in.
May 17th, 2005 at 1:11 am
you are all buying into two pieces of bullshit:
1)newsweek is part of a vast left wing conspiracy
2)the left hates America and loves to see it brought down
Most liberals believe that things like flushing Koran’s down the toilet (as well as what happened in Abu Ghraib) make us less safe. Its of no benefit to any of us to see this happen.
As to the whole throwing the lefty meme back at us, read this..the Bushies are doing a pretty good job of making parallels between the two.
May 17th, 2005 at 8:23 am
To illustrate the absurdity of Newsweek’s claim that they “can’t verify that it is untrue.”
“A single ananymous source claims that the editor-in-chief of Newsweek has sex with goats. We can’t verify that the claim is untrue.”
May 17th, 2005 at 10:44 am
I tend to agree with the line of thinking on this post
http://www.alarmingnews.com/archives/002988.html
http://www.alarmingnews.com/archives/002976.html
basicially it is the people who rioted fault.
Yes newsweek published inaccurate stories, but in the end it was the arabs who decided to get out of line and wrech havoc and the are responsible for their actions.
I also think that a lot less riots will happen in afganistian, because of this incident. Though more protests will happen (which protests are fine, as long as they do not turn into a riot)
May 17th, 2005 at 2:18 pm
What scares me is that I suspect the people who are getting worked up about what Newsweek printed resulting in riots would be chiding Newsweek for printing it even if it were unquestionably true.
May 17th, 2005 at 6:17 pm
Somehow I think that if my very, very Christian neighbors heard about a Bible being desecrated by atheists in Moscow, they wouldn’t riot or rush out and attempt to lynch the nearest atheist (namely, me).
May 18th, 2005 at 6:29 pm
Nah, here in the US we reserve our violent riots for when our sports teams (e.g., the Lakers) win championships. 🙂
Of course, if these people didn’t riot about the Qu’ran thing, they would have found some other reason to riot.