9/28/98
I first heard the word "spin," as it is used to
describe an effort at influencing public understanding, shortly
after Clinton was first elected back in 1992. Ever since, under
the current occupant of the White House, it has become an art
form. And the use of "spin" has changed in that it
originally was employed to put the best possible face on any
given event - and it has now become a venue for disseminating
outright falsehoods.
It has often been noted that if you tell a lie often enough, it
becomes accepted as truth - and that's how spin is utilized by
the current administration. Moreover, they have formalized lying
by distributing widely documents called "Talking
Points." The Clintonistas accomplish two things by using the
Talking Points technique
1. Whatever falsehood they are currently telling gets repeated, by everyone, over and over and,
2. They are all talking from the same page in the playbook-and consistency is absolutely necessary if the technique is to work.
If you pay careful attention, you will hear the exact same
phrases coming out of the mouths of Gephardt, Bonior, Albright,
and all the rest of their "talking heads" on the Sunday
news shows, and that is not a coincidence. You will also see the
same words used in the newspapers and magazines that are
overwhelmingly biased toward the liberal Democrat party line. I
offer some examples.
It now accepted as gospel truth that the Clinton Crime bill has
put 100,000 new cops on the street. Al Gore and most of the press
talk about it as one of Clinton's proudest achievements. I defy
anyone to back that lie up. The Clintonistas, in one effort at
proving their case, have been caught taking credit for
replacements for retiring cops as "new cops" on the
beat. And since federal funding was (and is) only temporary, many
municipalities had to let their new cops go when the federal
funding ran out - Detroit among them - or take the money for them
out of other programs such as welfare and road maintenance.
Due to "spin" it is now part of the
"zeitgeist" that Clinton has surprised the world with
his outstanding grasp of foreign affairs, and he is credited for
the remarkable progress that has been made in that area. Well,
let me tell you what I think. We still have our troops in Haiti,
and they are still doing the same dirty work of collecting the
garbage, repairing the roads, delivering the mail, etc., etc.,
while just this past week a boatload of Haitians showed up on our
shores, right behind the Cubans, just as it was back in 1992. As
far as I know, we still have troops in Somalia, Bosnia, and in
fact all over Yugoslavia, car bombs are still going off in
Ireland, Netanyahu and Afafat are both due here any day now to
pick up their checks - so what's changed? Only one thing that I
know of - the world is tottering on the brink of financial chaos,
that's what's changed.
The "spin" on education is that, under Clinton, SAT
scores have improved dramatically - but what they don't tell you
that the mean SAT scores have been retargeted such that the same
answers on any given test now result in somewhere around a 12%
improvement in scoring. You can call that progress if you want,
but I'm not buying it. Most colleges still spend the first two
years of your money in remedial education so students can read
their textbooks.
In order to finance their social programs, the Clintonistas
thought they had found a gold mine by suing the tobacco
companies, and in levying new taxes on tobacco. They utilized
another lie that has now become accepted - "3,000 kids a day
become addicted to tobacco, and will eventually die from it's
use." Al Gore, the original Tobacco Man, uses that one all
the time. I wrote the CDC [Center for Disease Control] and asked
them to tell me how they define "addicted." Get this -
one cigarette a month, to the CDC, constitutes addiction. And the
number of deaths the fed attributes to tobacco has risen every
year despite the fact that cigarette consumption has declined
dramatically. They just make the numbers up as far as I can tell.
And don't get me started on this one, the latest product of
Clinton's team of spinmiesters - "Starr has spent 4 years
and $45 million dollars and all he has to show for it is a little
hanky-panky between consenting adults." Tell that to the
former Governor of Arkansas.
Can you believe anything these people say?