Johnny: Teacher, Sue's a big liar. She wasn't sick yesterday, her Mom took her to the mall.
Sue: Teacher, Johnny's a big liar, too, he wasn't sick last week, his Dad took him to a ball game.
Sue is trying to justify her lie by pointing out that Johnny also lies. What we know is that both of them probably have lied.
Well, that's what we get from lefty blogs that are still trying to minimize the import of Rather's lies about Bush's National Guard records. Here's Gene Lyons, quoted at Eschaton:
I saw pundit Andrew Sullivan on CNN clucking over CBS’ mistakes. In 1994, when Sullivan edited The New Republic, it ran a cover story accusing Bill Clinton of corruptly enriching his wife’s law firm by changing Arkansas usury laws as governor. In fact, the deed was done by public referendum under Clinton’s Republican predecessor.Of course, there's nothing there about all the misleading if not downright lying things that ABC, NYT, and many other media outlets have published about Republicans and conservatives over the years. Desperation, thy name is "Lefty".
On Dec. 19, 1995, ABC News’ "Nightline" aired a deceptively edited video clip of a Hillary Clinton press conference about Whitewater. It accused her of lying about the very information electronically deleted from her remarks. No consequences followed.
On May 4, 1996, The New York Times published an article with a deceptive Associated Press byline stating that an FBI agent’s trial testimony described a $50,000 windfall to Whitewater from an illegal loan. As the actual AP article stipulated, the agent gave no such testimony. Many accusatory editorials and columns followed, helping Kenneth Starr to prolong his fruitless investigation of Bill Clinton’s finances for years. The Times has never acknowledged its blunder.
