Weekend Open Thread: Washington Post’s Deployment of Pinocchios is Worse Than Hitler

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We were going to do the "Can Donald Trump win?" thing this week, but Our Man Tyler had to go to some sort of concert, so we'll just leave this here for now and get back to it sometime later.  (We will talk about Hitler, though!)

We were going to do the “Can Donald Trump win?” thing this week, but Our Man Tyler had to go to some sort of concert, so we’ll just leave this here for now and get back to it sometime later. (We will talk about Hitler, though!)

I haven’t had time to pursue a real serious Weekend Open Thread this week, so here’s a controversy snagged off of the web, featuring local blog product Vox.  The point of the story is: will the media treat Bernie Sanders fairly or unfairly?  The answer is: way, way, way beyond unfairly.  Enough that they should dry up and blow away out of shame.

The Washington Post’s “fact-checker” — and to be truly accurate I should put both of those words in separate scare quotes — is an ambulatory piece of toilet tissue named Glenn Kessler.  Here’s what he wrote in response to Bernie Sanders’s contention that he learned the importance of political participation when he learned that Adolf Hitler came to power after winning an election:

Germany’s president, Paul von Hindenburg, was nearing the end of his seven-year term and showing signs of weakness and senility. Hindenburg was a popular war hero but he did not want to run again; however, he was persuaded to seek a second term by party leaders of the Catholic Centre Party, Social Democrats and liberals who were wary of the growing power of the Nazis.

Hitler, having in the meantime secured German citizenship, waged an energetic campaign for the presidency, making full use of new technology such as film. But he placed a distant second when the elections were held March 13, 1932. Hindenburg received 49.6 percent, just short of a majority to avoid a run-off, compared to 30.1 percent for Hitler.

When the run-off election (with three candidates) took place April 10, Hindenburg received 53 percent and Hitler 36.8 percent.

A writer from Vox wrote back with a searing rebuttal of Mr. Kessler’s imbecility — his giving Sanders one “Pinocchio” would have been bad enough, but giving him FOUR of them is like begging to be fired while actually hurling bags of feces at readers —  which is really good reading, and I suggest that you get right to it.

Hitler wouldn’t have come to power absent the Nazis winning a plurality of seats in 1932. Hindenburg was loath to hand over the chancellorship to Hitler; it was his refusal to accept a Nazi-led government that forced a snap election in November right after one in July. And even then, Hindenburg held out for months. Only when it became clear that a right-wing government led by someone other than Hitler was completely untenable, given the makeup of parliament, did Hindenburg let Hitler accede to the chancellorship in January 1933.

Moreover, this bizarre historical nitpicking totally loses sight of Sanders’s ultimate, utterly banal point: that who wins elections matters, and that this is evidenced by the fact that the Nazis rose to power in no small part by winning seats in the Reichstag. We can argue all day about the relative power of the Reichspresident versus the Reichskanzler, but no one in their right mind would argue that Hitler could’ve risen to power if the Nazis hadn’t won the 1932 parliamentary elections.

Kessler has done this sort of stupid crank-yanking in other election years, and if there is a way to shame him into leaving the Post, Washington DC, and journalism altogether I would truly love to hear it.

OJB wishes a Happy 20th anniversary to the OC Weekly! (Note: these are a moth's olfactory sensory organs used in finding mates, not its genitalia.  After all, we're not the OC Weekly.)

OJB wishes a happy 20th anniversary to the OC Weekly!
(Note: these are a moth’s olfactory sensory organs used in finding mates, not its genitalia. After all, we’re not the OC Weekly.)

Yet, to be entirely fair to the Post, they also had an article on scientific research into animal genitalia, which you should also read — and from therein click the link above the photo of a couple of ducks to get to the fascinating article on why, shockingly, such research has been slanted towards the study of male outside-fanciness rather than female inside-fanciness (and thank you for giving us that delicate way to phrase things, Mr. Fred Rogers.)

In other news, this weekend (or so) marks the 60th anniversary of the lynching murder (for the “crime” of allegedly whistling at a white woman) of Emmitt Till, sort of the Trayvon Martin of his day; the 45th anniversary of the Chicano Moratorium in which (among other things) journalist Ruben Salazar was killed the a tear gas projectile during a police riot; the 40th anniversary of the birth of actress Sara Ramirez of Spamalot and Grey’s Anatomy; and the 20th anniversary of the first publication of the OC Weekly, and — oh yeah — the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina (please read this link for a sense of how it changed New Orleans.)  Only three of these involved violent tragedies (and yes, I’m counting Katrina.)

This is your Weekend Open Thread: talk about that and whatever else you’d like, within reasonable bounds of decorum and discretion.


About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)