To say they're both the same just because there are bad apples in both bunches is unfair to both sides. What you need to do is look at both sides' corruption and decide for which one the corruption is the exception, rather than the rule.
I won't deny that every now and then a right-wing politician is caught in a scandal, be it sexual, criminal or otherwise. I will, however, state that the frequency of this occurance on the Right is far, far less than what you see on the Left. The higher a left-wing politician rises, the more corrupt you can be sure he or she is. Just look at the initially proposed Presidential Cabinet. Nearly all of them turned out to be tax cheats. Look at Rod Blagojevich. Look at Al Gore or John Edwards. Look at Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters. Look at Van Jones.
And that's just recent!
But to really cut to the heart of the matter, you've got to look at what morality they're willing, in daily business practice, to view as acceptable.
On the Right, any politician caught in any sort of wrong-doing is out of a job. Anyone caught conspiring with them is similarly out of a job. Uusually it's a resignation in disgrace, but sometimes they are fired. Either way, right-wingers don't take kindly to their fellow conservatives not living up to expectations.
We certainly do not encourage each other to tell blatant lies about the other side in an effort to bolster our cause. We don't accuse those on the Left of behavior or views they are not guilty of. Our politicians can't even say "you're lying" when they tell bald-faced falsehoods about us. Well, some can, but not all politicians are as gutsy as Joe Wilson.
See, that's the thing about the Left; they don't really believe what they're saying. Oh, they have the courage of their convictions (to a point, anyway; see James Cameron). But they certainly don't actually believe the things they say in their own defense. They stick to their guns, but their positions are built on lies and half-truths that they need in order to arrive at the conclusions they want.
A Rightist takes all the facts he can gather into consideration, listens to arguments made by all sides, and then makes up his mind what he believes. You can tell this because among right-wingers there is no clear consensus on issues like God, abortion or gay marriage.
On the other hand, a Leftist takes a position, and then clamors for any support he can to retain that position. You can tell this because if there's one thing that's strong about the Left, it's their uniformity of opinion.
If the Leftist cannot find any facts to support his case, he either pretends that doesn't matter or makes those facts up. For proof of this, you need look no further than the JournoList, a listserv of left-wing journalists created by Ezra Klein for the purpose of keeping the left-wing narrative in the old media alive. Among some of the choicest comments made on the JournoList was one made by Spencer Ackerman in response to the question of what to do about Jeremiah Wright. This comment was made during the 2008 Presidential campaign, when it began to look like the racist, anti-America, pro-Farrakhan minister that Obama called his "spiritual mentor" might hurt Obama's campaign. The matter was hushed up right away, and hardly spoken of in the old media, and those on the Right who kept the issue alive were, surprise! Labeled racists.
Here's what Ackerman had to say about how to deal with the Jeremiah Wright problem:
It’s not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright’s defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.
If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.
Wow. Just...wow. In essence, Ackerman has said "Our position is indefensable, so let's do our best to put the other side on the defensive instead."
There's a reason you have never heard of a right-wing "JournoList" secretly saying this kind of thing to each other. Because it doesn't happen. I'm not saying nobody on our side lies, or tries to deflect criticism. I'm saying that when this does happen, this is the exception, not the rule.
If Ackerman had been a right-winger, and had been on a pro-McCain board posting this kind of horseshit, he would have been kicked off. He would have been told "Listen, we're not going to lie. We're going to do this clean or we don't do it at all."
I hear all the time people accusing the Right of lying. "Bush lied, people died." "Fox News is nothing but a bunch of liars." "Rush Limbaugh is a big fat liar."
But it seems like, when pressed, left-wingers can't really point to a time when we've been caught actually lying. Oh, we've gotten our facts wrong. One or two journalists or politicians may have overlooked stuff in the past, but as I've been saying, these are the exceptions, not the rule. But I keep hearing that the Right is nothing but a pack of liars. It's as if they're liars by virtue of being right-wingers. Of course Fox News lies! I mean...they're Fox News! Of course Limbaugh is lying! He's Rush Limbaugh! That's their only defense.
A while back, an author whose work I admire was discussing the healthcare bill on his blog. He was gung-ho for it and felt that anyone against it was against humanity, more or less. He then responded to a few commenters who were against it with another post, in which he concluded:
I also found it striking that so many of the objections to the health bill (NOT all, please note, some of the arguments against the bill were polite, cogent, and well reasoned, so please note that I am saying SO MANY and not ALL) seemed rootly firmly in misunderstanding as to the actual provisions of the bill. They were based on Republican talking points and the biased accounts of Fox news and hysterical right wing talk radio. Guys, really. These people have lied to you. Change the channel. I won't ask you to watch MSNBC, which has its own slant, but go at least to one of the centrist channels like CNN or the old line networks, or better still, read a good newspaper.
As [Partner]'s Uncle Pat -- known to most of the rest of you as the late, great Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- once said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."
Needless to say I was somewhat irritated by his blanket statement that Republican talking points or anything spoken by Fox News or "hysterical" right-wing talk radio was automatically a lie. He didn't say what proof he had that these people have "lied to you"; as far as he was concerned, if a right-winger said it, it's a lie. (As an aside, I gotta wonder what right-wing talk radio personalities he doesn't consider "hysterical".)
I decided to challenge him, so I sent him a letter asking what proof he had that the lying came from the Right, and only facts came from the Left. I reminded him that CNN, which he says is "centrist" and therefore supposedly more truthful, had run a story about some racist quotes attributed to Rush Limbaugh that turned out to be totally fake. I stated that they had quoted a website that offered no sources, and that it seriously called their journalistic integrity into question. I was not asking him to list his credentials or by what grounds he declares himself an expert, but he felt compelled to do so anyway in his response to me:
I have a master's degree in journalism, from one of the leading journalism schools in the country (Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, to be exact). I've worked as a journalist from time to time during my life, I have dealt with many journalists during my career, and I know quite a few working journalists. So please accept that I have considerable expertise on this subject.
Sure, you have knowledge. Doesn't mean you're not biased. He also goes on at length about how he states that it is the goal of the journalist to be objective. No one's arguing that, but he still offers no proof that CNN is objective, merely that he doesn't think Fox News is:
A couple points about that. Being objective is NOT the same thing as being "balanced," which Fox likes to tout. (Actually, Fox is wildly unbalanced, but that's another matter). The objective reporter strives for truth, not for balance. A "balanced" reporter when writing about the solar system will give equal time to the Copernican and Ptolemiac theories, and claim he was being fair by presenting "both sides." An objective reporter will report that Copernicus was right (more or less) and that Ptolemy's ideas have all been disproven. Sure, the cliche says that "there are two sides to every story," and a good reporter is aware of that... but that does not mean each side has an equal portion of the truth.
He then goes on to criticize Fox News by blaming them for the Tea Parties:
But Fox News has changed that equation. From the first Fox has been slanted heavily to the right -- not only in their commentary, which is perfectly respectable (newspapers have always had editorial pages, where opinions were expressed, but those same opinions were always kept OUT of the news columns)... but also in its NEWS reporting, which was and is a shock to anyone who takes the tenet of the professional seriously. Consider, if you will, the way Fox reports on these "Tea Parties," events which the network itself was instrumental in starting and promoting. That violates every canon of journalistic ethics that I was ever taught. You report news, you don't create it.
The F--K???!!! The Tea Parties were not started by Fox News, and to say they are is to create your own facts. Notice he offers no proof of this statement, either.
After that, he talks about MSNBC and admits that it's not objective, either, but then concludes this way:
In between you have CNN and the three traditional networks, CBS, NBC, and ABC, which are still striving to hold to the old standards of objectivity. If you want to get your news from television, those are the places to get it. (Admittedly, even those stalwarts are not what they were. The days of Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Eric Sevareid, and Edward R. Murrow are sadly gone).
Where in any of that do you see an answer to the question I put to him? I was not asking which stations are more objective; he could not have been more clear about which stations he felt were the most objective. What I was asking was why. When did he objectively decide that CNN (and the alphabet networks) was more objective than Fox News? How did he decide that there was no left-wing slant to CNN? He's able to recognize that about MSNBC due to how overt it is, but thinks that CNN is "centrist" and therefore not lying to us. How does he know this?
Oh, and he had nothing, literally nothing, to say about CNN's lying about Rush Limbaugh (or, to be fair, repeating lies as if they were true).
I asked him to defend his side and point to the proof of lies from the other side. He did neither.
Then there's the Congressional Black Caucus. Back near the end of the debate, the CBC walked through a crowd of Tea Partiers, flip-phones held high, clearly waiting for a racially-charged incident of violence to take place. None happened. Undeterred, Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver claimed one man spit on him. Video of the incident shows him walking close to a man who is chanting "Kill the Bill" and it's possible that some spittle flying from the man's mouth might have struck Cleaver, but this hardly constitutes being spat upon. Rep. Lewis claims he heard the n-word fifteen times. To this day, no one can produce video of this occurring, despite the fact that, as I said, flip-phones were in abundance. There's been a $100,000 reward offered by conservative online media mogul Andrew Breitbart, that remains unclaimed. The Left would rather accuse Breitbart of lying (about what? He didn't make any claims.) than offer any proof that they aren't.
I don't see this on the Right. Right-wingers don't evade the questions they're asked. We don't claim things and then refuse to give proof of our claims. We don't skip out on debates we started when the going gets tough. We don't rely on data from institutions caught falsifying their research. We don't make up conspiracy theories and then act like the mere fact that we made them up is proof of their veracity. We're not perfect, but we're trying to be honest and lawful, while the Left is trying to win. At any cost. It's probably why in the court of public debate, we appear to be losing.
