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(Gen. George S. Patton - bore no resemblance to George C. Scott)

With many pundits invoking the spirit of General George S. Patton lately, it would seem they are actually invoking the spirit of George C. Scott, who played the legendary World War 2 General in the movie "Patton" rather than the actual real-life General. And so I ran across a series of broadcasts on the occasion of VE Day from May 8,1945 where General Patton addressed the listening audience to the work his 3rd Army had achieved in declaring victory over Germany.

Gen.George S.Patton: “Now that victory in Europe has been achieved, let us review the Third Army’s part in this epic struggle.”

Not the hellfire and out-of-control zealot as portrayed in fiction, but rather the cool and level-headed professional soldier.

Don't forget that reality and fiction are rarely on speaking terms.

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(T.E. Lawrence aka: Lawrence of Arabia. Even the dressup was part of the sham)

Myths, it seems don't last for very long these days - sometimes they're debunked within hours. And with some myths, that's a good thing. But not so long ago myths, urban legends and wild flights of fancy stuck around long enough to become part of our national psyche, wound up become acknowledged facts which everybody seemed to know and swear by.

One of the earlier myths of the 20th century came in the guise of T.E. Lawrence, a British Army officer stationed in the Middle East during World War One. By all accounts he was your average officer - nothing too special or unusual. But somewhere along the line a legend grew up around him and, by all accounts, he was happy to oblige. Soon he became the stuff of books and rumors of his heroic exploits crammed the pages of magazines all over the world after the war.

But in 1956, a book was published exploding the myth and it started a controversy that raged for years - the basis of which still holds today. In February of 1956, NBC Radio as part of their New World series ran a panel discussion on the art of debunking and posed the question to a number of scholars both here and in England, where the Lawrence myth was alive and well.

Napier Wilt (English Professor-Dean of Humanities, Univ. of Chicago): “It seems to me that an attack on a popular hero should be taken for granted, ever since the 20s we rather assume that anybody who attains the heights to being a hero is going to be debunked within a week or two.”

A.J.P. Taylor (British historian): “The Lawrence myth, the buildup of Lawrence as a hero has been rather a sham affair, rather a made up affair all the time. As far back as I can remember there’ve been people writing, hysterically exaggerated books about Lawrence immediately after the (first World) war, if fact even during the first war popular magazines did it – he was deliberately plugged , and mind you he was very skillful at plugging himself. Nobody has been a smarter advertiser and I think that this heightening of the tempo – look at any of the pro-Lawrence biographies, look at the things in which say, Winston Churchill said about him, well they’re so grotesquely exaggerated that it’s not surprising that we get grotesque exaggeration on the other side.”

Grotesque exaggerations - sounds familiar.

What is a myth? What starts a myth and who gains from the myth.

With all the myths and urban legends currently floating around, and being shot down almost as fast as they are sent up, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at what the fine art of Debunking was all about in the 1950s.

Maybe there are similarities.

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(VP Spiro Agnew - ran around threatening revoked FCC licenses)

At the height of the war between the White House and the Media, The National Press Club ran a panel discussion featuring Bill Monroe of NBC News, Ben Bagdikian and Fred Friendly of CBS. Members of the White House Communications staff were invited; Herb Klein, Pat Buchanan and Dean Burch, but declined. The subject was The Media and The Administration and a few interesting myths were put to rest.

Ben Bagdikian: “The fact is, that the press of this country is overwhelmingly conservative and Republican. We are in danger of not enough criticism of government, not too much. Most of the new that leaves this town (D.C.) is pretty much what public officials say, with not enough time and energy put into testing the validity of what they say. It’s only human that a public official wants it that way, but it happens to be lousy journalism and bad for democracy. Now Democrats weren’t in love with the press either in their time. And we shouldn’t expect to be loved. We dish it out and we ought to be able to take it when it’s given back to us. But when it comes to the press, I think there’s a difference between Republicans and Democrats. The Republicans have had a sympathetic press for so long and in so many places, that they now regard any departure from this as a theft of a natural right. Now it’s not really the Republicans fault either. It’s the fault of the majority of papers in this country who’ve conditioned their local conservative readers to believe that it is the natural born duty of every publication to support Republicans. Let me be specific: a paper’s endorsing a Presidential candidate in 1968, 80% endorsed Nixon, which is about what it’s been with one exception, for Republican candidates in every Presidential race in this generation. And its not just the small town papers. Endorsement by circulation size is about the same percentage. And if we’re talking about a press out of step, how about 80% for Nixon, while the readers vote 43 ½% for Nixon?”

Bagdikian says pretty much what most everyone felt, even as far back as 1972. The idea that mainstream media is a bastion of liberal thought is really a myth cooked up by the GOP. And it's plain to see this myth still holds true today, even more so.

It's interesting to note that the systematic dismantling of network news departments and FCC regulations being abandoned really started with the Nixon administration. It's only been the past 20 odd years we've actually witnessed the long-term effects of those massacres.

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(Legalizing Marijuana - Goes back to 1942)

Since the question of Legalizing Marijuana has started up again (or actually never really went away), I ran across this Firing Line episode from October 1971, with William F. Buckley, Dr. Lester Grinspoon and Lawrence McKinney discussing the facts and myths behind Marijuana as a drug and as a question of legalizing.

William F. Buckley: “If it were legalized and freely available, anybody who overdosed himself would be doing so intentionally, am I right?

Dr. Lester Grinspoon: “Yes absolutely. I would say that without a doubt . . . .

Buckley: “And what percentage of the people who . .who in fact use marijuana today, would you say, accidentally overdose themselves?

Grinspoon: “ Well it’s hard to say. The frequency of these reactions is not . . . these adverse reactions, is not very common . . . the data from the Haight-Ashbury clinic, demonstrates that it’s not very common. In something like 280,000 consecutive admissions to the Los Angeles County General Hospital there are only several . . . two or three . . . .three marijuana reactions. And two of them were due to injecting stuff into their veins . . . .it’s really . . .except for this – people at the Haight-Ashbury are very experienced, relatively experienced marijuana users. And they’re less likely to have an adverse reaction. It’s people who are inexperienced . . . .

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While discussing with Ed Schultz whether there is going to be a public option in the final health care bill once everything is said and done, Shultz reads off John Boehner's response from the Republicans saying that the Democrat's plan is a "government takeover" of health care. Schakowsky points out that Boehner's statement is of course complete bunk since no one is proposing single payer (sadly IMO) and they've already compromised with Republicans, so they've already got a bipartisan bill. She goes on to make one more really great point on the media's lousy coverage of this debate.

Schakowsky: Let me just say one other thing Ed about the news media. When myths are, or lies are told, it is not just he said she said. I like what you said. It is not true. It is simply a lie that this is a government takeover and I think that it really ought to be up to the media too, not to just report well this is what the Republican said then this is what the Democrat said and this is what the President said. They're telling lies! And I think they need to be called on it.

Amen sister.

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Ed Schultz goes through the poll numbers that show just how badly so many Americans are buying into the outright lies on health care/insurance reform that are being put out there. There needs to be a real debate about just what's actually potentially going into these bills where the public is going to end up on the short end of the stick and put at the mercy of the health insurance companies without the distraction of having to debunk this other nonsense as well.

Ed talks to Aaron Carroll, author of Don't Swallow Your Gum!: Myths, Half-Truths, and Outright Lies About Your Body and Health to talk about the hurdles with overcoming that misinformation.

From The Thom Hartmann Show, the myths about Canadian health care. Hartmann interviews Dave's cohort at Orcinus, Sara Robinson, who has written about the issue here and here.

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(All 24 minutes of his Blogger call. I've been updating the post.) President Obama and David Axlerod hosted a conference call with liberal bloggers today on the whole health care issue. The audio contains the entire call with the President. You know we're heading for the home stretch in this debate and I thought it was a good idea that the President reached out to the blogs and acknowledged the work that we've done so far. Here's a quick recap of the points he made. Other bloggers will have more details about the call.

President Obama wanted to tell us directly what's going on..
He wants the bill to be strong with an excellent public option.
The status quo is unacceptable for Americans as premiums are skyrocketing....
Doing nothing is defending the indefensible

Opponents are offering up nothing and admit that they are just trying to stop it. He mentioned Jim DeMint and Bill Kristol as examples of obstructionism.
Liberal Bloggers have done an excellent job of debunking right wing myths...

Bloggers have played and will play a critical role in passing legislation...

Record deficits is a myth. He inherited this deficit and it's not an excuse for inaction...
It's important to keep pressure on members of Congress...

Sam Stein of Huff Po: Obama Calls On Bloggers To Keep Health Care Pressure On Congress "I know the blogs are best at are debunking myths that can slip through a lot of the traditional media outlets," he said. "And that is why you are going to play such an important role in our success in the weeks to come."

Very pleased that Bloggers have been letting Congress know all about the desperation Americans are feeling and that's been critical.

And he wants us to keep up the pressure on Congress and the media.
Doesn't want to wait.

He talked for about four minutes and then opened it up for questions. And I was the first one in line. Since the goal of the opposition is to defeat the bill, a key way to do that is by delaying the process. I asked the President if he would demand that Congress work through their cushy vacations in August if they try to delay the bill. While they are on their magical holidays, millions will suffer in August over their petty tactics. I wanted to ask a question that required an answer.

John Amato: Good afternoon President Obama, thanks for having us on.

President Obama: You bet.

Amato: My question is, now we have these, we'll call them conservative democrats joining with some republicans in wanting to delay the bill and saying that they need more time to go over it and actually read it. My question to you is will you ask Congress to forgo their August recess and work this bill out because while they're taking a vacation, millions of Americans are either losing their health care or are about to go bankrupt because of health care issues.

So if they're going to whine about not having enough time then they should act like real Americans and work during August.

President Obama: Well, here's what I've said. We cannot delay any longer. If people keep on saying"what's the rush? We've been debating this for fifty years. We've been talking about health care reform throughout the campaign. The day after I was elected we started contacting key leaders in Congress about the fact that this was going to be #1 domestic priority. All these committees have been meeting, all the experts have been talking and knows the time to make tough decisions. I understand that people want to put off tough decisions, but ultimately we can move the process forward in which all the options have been considered and we go ahead and make smarter choices that provide the American people with more security, greater options as well as bending the cost curve over the long term and I'm confident that we can achieve that on the timeline that I put forward.

I think it was telling that some of you may have seen. A Republican Senator saying thi weekend saying. "we're just going to delay and delay because if we can stop Obama on this, this is going to be his Waterloo. We'll break him." That was a quote. And IU think it indicates to me in which a lot of folks may sincerely think that the more time we take the better off we're going to be, but I also think that some who deliberately want to delay this process because they know the longer the special interest have to run negative ads or lobby members of Congress, the more difficult it becomes to get this done and I think the time for talk is through. It's time for us to go and act.

John Amato: I agree, will you then make them give us a bill before the August recess?

President Obama: We are working as hard as we can and I've told Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi that it is critical that we see serious forward motion before people leave. Alright?

He dodged the question, but in doing so he made it clear that he does not want any delays. Stalling cannot be an option so I want to make the case that if Joe Lieberman wants more time to read the bill then he should stay at work doing so. Health care has been in the works for 65 years and Congress knows all there is to know about the process. Ted Kennedy has been writing opinion pieces now to force the issue and that's been his mission for forty years now. The Cause of My Life’ Inside the fight for universal health care.

I'll have David Axlerod's audio a little later...Please feel free to write up a transcript for the full piece so I can add it to the post.

Here's more from Sam Stein:

In a roughly 25-minute session with a handful of prominent progressive bloggers, the president also asked for help combating disinformation about his health care plan.

Continue reading »

Lawyers, Guns and Money: This is your court on conservatives – a strange enthusiasm for punishment of the innocent.

TransGriot: 10 busted myths about the Canadian health care system.

Intrepid Liberal Journal: Living on only $2 a day – an interview with economist Jonathan Morduch.

Cab Drollery: Your money at play – outsourcing oversight. (What could possibly go wrong?)

The Bobblespeak Translations: Meet the Press with Sam Nunn and Fred Thompson, translated.

Guest post by Batocchio. Temporarily e-mail tips to batocchio9 AT yahoo DOT com.

I'm reading Will "Attytood" Bunch's new book, "Tear Down This Myth: How The Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future" about how deeply ingrained the Reagan mythology is in our country's political culture (with the help, of course, of a complicit media).

Fascinating book, really thorough. (There are things in here I didn't even know, and I'm more informed about Reagan than the average bear.) The Reagan myth is so large, so unquestioned that he even gets credit for the things he didn't do: Star Wars! Stopped the Cold War! Made the economy hum like a top! (If you have a Reagan-loving in-law, this is the book you want to read before your next family get-together.)

From the first chapter:

[...] The Reagan myth isn’t just a political problem for the GOP. Increasingly, as the idealized Reagan took hold in the American imagination, Democrats seemed to struggle even harder with the question of just who was Ronald Reagan – and whether political success going forward depended upon undercutting Reagan’s legend, simply ignoring it, or embracing all or part of it. That’s why it was a political bombshell when Sen. Barack Obama made it clear in early 2008 that Reaganism was playing some role in his thinking as he mapped out his own more progressive route to the White House – but the specifics of what Obama was getting at were open to debate.

"Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not, and a way that Bill Clinton did not," Obama told the editorial board of the Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal in January 2008. Seeking to elaborate, the Democratic senator said that "[w]e want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing." Obama’s comments caused a scramble among his Democrats: Was the presidential frontrunner simply praising the political style of the twice-elected Republican, or was his comment also intended to voice support for some of Reagan’s policy ideas? Obama advisors stressed the former – that he was merely seeking to remind voters of Reagan’s “hope and optimism.”

Obama’s statements seemed to flummox the Democrats in 2008 almost as much as Reagan himself did circa 1984. John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator who was appealing to the party’s more progressive wing in those early primaries, said Reagan “openly did extraordinary damage to the middle class and working people, created a tax structure that favored the very wealthiest Americans and caused the middle class and working people to struggle every single day…I can promise you this: this president will never use Ronald Reagan as an example for change."

And yet just a couple of weeks later, it was Edwards who was gone from the presidential race, and Obama who was soldiering on – leaving the unanswered questions of whether even a progressive Democrat in the White House could tackle not just the immediate problems of Iraq, record-high gasoline prices, a skyrocketing federal debt but the more ominous issues of world energy supply and climate change without doing so under the deepening shadow of the legacy of Ronald Reagan.

How did we get to this point in American politics? It would be easy to give all the credit to the Ronald Reagan myth machine, to the neo-conservatives and tax-warriors-turned-lobbyists behind the move to seemingly pave over and rename one long Ronald Reagan Boulevard from sea to shining sea. But no myth would be possible without the man. And if there was ever a man who instinctively knew how to write that screenplay – who rode in from Hollywood to create a new kind of presidency that would focus on strong words and cinematic images that would last long after people forgot the policies sometimes loosely attached to them – it was Ronald Wilson Reagan.

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Mitt Romney was wanking forth on MTP Sunday about the horrendous disadvantage American automakers have because of labor costs, only briefly mentioning the 800-pound gorilla in the room -- namely, health-care costs -- as "benefits."

Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan set him straight:

One of the reasons there is a cost disadvantage is that other countries provide health care for their citizens. In America, we put that entire burden on business.

Mittens nonetheless tries to regurgitate the "$70-an-hour" lie:

Romney: The companies across the ocean have come here, made plants in the U.S. -- Nissan, Toyota, and Honda -- they're able to make cars at $45 an hour labor costs plus benefits and legacy costs, our cost is $73 an hour --

Granholm: It is not! That has been totally debunked -- now, you know, Mitt Romney, that this is not --

Romney: Labor costs and legacy costs and benefits is $73 an hour.

Maybe Romney should ask those companies where they stand on national subsidization of their industry. Because back in Japan, they understand that underwriting their manufacturing capacity is the key to a competitive economy ... which is why they keep the yen artificially low. This subsidization is part of why those same automakers can operate at lower cost here.

Romney and the Republicans have made it clear that Detroit can go suck eggs. They just don't want to say it on TV.