You can’t make this stuff up

Right-wing coccooning in action.

Cathy Seipp writes a column about media bias. It makes, as Kevin Drum notes, a fairly elementary logical mistake. Someone makes an absurdly pro-Bush film, and turns out to be a Bush contributor. An anonymous intervieer Seipp describes as a “hack” thinks that’s relevant in a way that a contribution to Gore wouldn’t have been. Seipp doesn’t understand, or pretends not to understand, the point: that the director’s Bush contribution makes the film’s praise of Bush less surprising, and therefore less convincing, had come from a Gore contributor. But at least Seipp tells the story accurately.

Kathryn Jean Lopez at The Corner excerpts it dishonestly, pretending that the exchange being criticized concerns a film about Eisenhower rather than the one about Bush.

Kevin Drum catches Lopez lying.

Glenn Reynolds links approvingly to both the logically challenged Seipp piece (“a must-read”) and the veridically challenged Lopez piece.

The sad thing is that the polarization in Blogland is now so extreme that it’s quite possible that no blog that Glenn bothers to read will bring Kevin’s correction to his attention.

With any luck, things wil calm down after November.

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com