An alternative way to look at “alternative facts”
There’s been a ton of chatter and mockery about Kelly Conway’s use of the phrase “alternative facts” to describe Trump press secretary Sean Spicer’s initial statements about attendance at the Trump inauguration. Here’s a piece at The Hill by Jennifer Calfas that states:
George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” is surging in popularity in the days since President Trump’s inauguration.
The iconic book, published nearly 70 years ago, is the sixth best-selling book on Amazon as of Tuesday morning.
Top Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway on Sunday defended the White House’s statements about the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration by referring to it “alternative facts.”
She was referring to White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s insistence that Friday’s swearing-in was “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period,” despite photos and videos showing that former President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration clearly had a bigger crowd on the National Mall.
Many on social media compared “alternative facts” to the use of “doublethink,” a type of rhetoric in “1984” by which the government presents two contradictory facts as both true.
I checked the dateline on the article, and it was 01/24/17 08:47 AM EST—in other words, this morning. This means that it was a half a day subsequent to Spicer’s clarification of exactly what he meant when he said that about the large audience:
QUESTION: And do you stand by your statement that was the most watched inaugural —
SPICER: I think —
QUESTION: — address of the —
SPICER: Sure, it was the most watched inaugural. When you look at — look, you look at just the one network alone got 16.9 million people online. Another couple of the networks there were tens of million people that watched that online. Never mind the audience that was here, the 31 million people watching it on television.
Combine that with the tens of million of people that watched it online, on a device. It’s unquestionable. I — I don’t — and I don’t see any numbers that — that dispute that when you add up attendance, viewership, total audience in terms(ph) of tablets, phones, on television. I’d love to see any information that proves that otherwise.
The WaPo transcript to which I linked is an interesting document. If you look at it, you’ll see two things. The first is that there were many other topics discussed at that press conference, mostly concerning what Trump has been doing in his first few days of office. But that’s not what social media is talking about. The second is that, as with Trump’s inaugural speech, the WaPo “helpfully” annotates the press conference, annotations that read like a continuation of an argument with Spicer rather than anything intended to elucidate. For example, in response to that quote of Spicer’s about adding up attendance—a quote that gives the lie to the meme that Spicer/Trump lied about this—the WaPo manages to grind out the following objection (this is the sum total of the commentary on the subject):
Spicer’s quote was that it was “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration ”” period ”” both in person and around the globe.”
He seems to be combining those two things, rather than saying it was also the biggest in-person crowd AND the biggest global crowd. If that’s what he meant initially, he probably should have said “combined” rather than “both.”
The WaPo’s objection is absurd. Yes indeed, “combined” probably would have been somewhat better and would have perhaps stopped the press from making its own reinterpretation of what he said, but to demand that level of precision in language is an obvious stretch, an attempt to avoid saying Spicer is making an excellent point. I think what he said and meant was fairly clear, as evidenced by his use of the word “witnessed” rather than “attended” (you’d use the latter for the live crowd), the word “audience” rather than “crowd,” as well as the phrase “both in person AND around the globe.”
Just call it a misunderstanding and move on. But the meme that Spicer was in the wrong is just too good to abandon.
And that Hill piece by Calfas is even worse, with its purposeful selection of which alternative facts to report and which to leave out. Calfas ignores Spicer’s elucidation entirely and pretends it didn’t happen. So will the real Orwellian please stand up?
And if sales of Orwell’s book have soared, perhaps it’s not just the left reading it in response to Conway. Maybe it’s the right in response to articles like Calfas’ and annotations in the WaPo.
So, what’s my own take on “alternative facts”? There are different sorts of facts. Two plus two equals four is a fact, and there is no alternative to it (although Orwell pointed out that if the Party wills it otherwise, some will believe it’s five).
But there are other kinds of facts. “How many people attended or watched the inauguration?” is a question. That question has an answer, but there are two problems with the answer. The first is possible confusion between the words “attended” and “watched,” because they mean two very different things and are measured in very different ways.
So the first problem is the definition of the question. The second is that there is no way to know the answer for sure. Crowd estimation is an art, and in the case of a crowd like that it’s based mostly on photos. Yesterday I quoted a crowd estimation expert (who was not from the Trump camp) who said that Trump didn’t have access to the photos that showed how relatively small the crowd was. So one could conclude that, although we don’t know the true size of the live crowd in DC, it was probably considerably smaller than at Obama’s inauguration, but that the Trump camp was using incomplete information about the live crowd.
That’s a case of alternative facts: using different photos to obtain your information. And of course it was compounded by a misinterpretation of his main point, in which the word “witness” did not mean “witness in person.”
“Alternative facts” are presented all the time, particularly in cases in which certainty is impossible. An excellent example is civilian deaths during a war (I wrote a lengthy post on the subject in 2007). Another is economic figures: income inequality and unemployment, just to name two favorites. How they are measured can make a world of difference.
Statistics can be used to prove almost anything, and they involve dueling “alternative facts.” This can be done maliciously and/or mendaciously, for propaganda purposes. Or—as Spicer rightly pointed out in his linked press conference—they can be the result of honest errors. They can also be the result of a bona fide disagreement on what is important and/or how to measure things.
To say that both sides don’t often choose among alternative facts is to deny reality. To pretend that alternative facts are Orwellian by definition is propaganda. They can be, but they often are not. But “alternative facts” was such a nifty phrase, so ripe for anti-Trump exploitation, that it could not be resisted.
[NOTE: This business of the WaPo annotating (supposedly fact-checking) the Spicer press conference got me to wondering whether this was done during the Obama administration. Of course, if it had been done, I highly doubt it was done in the same critical manner. But was it done at all, or is it an innovation just for Trump? Here’s Obama’s final press conference, back in mid-December—not annotated. However, shortly after the election Obama gave a press conference that was annotated.
But oh, what a difference in tone! Here’s a sample:
[OBAMA statement] We are indisputably in a stronger position today than we were when I came in eight years ago. Jobs have been growing for 73 straight months, incomes are rising, poverty is falling, the uninsured rate is at the lowest level on record, carbon emissions have come down without impinging on our growth, and so my instructions to my team are that we run through the tape, we make sure that we finish what we started, that we don’t let up in these last couple of months because my goal is on January 21, America’s in the strongest position possible and hopefully there’s an opportunity for the next president to build on that.
Number two, our work has also helped to stabilize the global economy and because there is one president at a time, I’ll spend this week reinforcing America’s support for the approaches that we’ve taken to promote economic growth and global security on a range of issues.
[WaPo annotation] Obama doesn’t want the whole Trump thing to overshadow his legacy too much.
Also, he seems to be making that case that he set Trump up to succeed ”“ with an economy on relatively solid footing.
That’s the sum total of what the WaPo has to say on the matter. I read all the annotations and couldn’t find a single one even mildly critical of Obama.
This made me curious to learn at what point the WaPo began these annotations. And that in turn led me to read some things that began a whole train of thought about this new practice of annotating transcripts. That’s a large enough topic to require another post, and I’m saving it for another day.]
“Yes indeed, “combined” probably would have been somewhat better and would have perhaps stopped the press from making its own reinterpretation of what he said, but to demand that level of precision in language is an obvious stretch, an attempt to avoid saying Spicer is making an excellent point” – Neo
Disagree. If one is going to come out swinging at the press on his very first official WH press conference (I believe), specifically focused on something as trivial as this, he had better be a whole LOT more precise.
That might apply to you or I, but really not a great excuse for a professional role in the WH, particularly knowing that the msm are rather hostile.
BTW, agree with much of the rest of your article regarding “facts” and the different versions of it.
I do think that KA Conway gave an enduring quote for the left / msm to run repeatedly for the next four years.
They have tds, largely because trump continues to say dubious things, like there were millions of illegal votes, without really pointing to anything as proof.
Drives them crazy.
But, it also loses him credibility.
Big Maq:
That quote of Spicer’s wasn’t from his very first official WH press conference. The later quote—the correction that was very precise—was from his very first official WH press conference.
The original quote was in his first press briefing, which occurred Saturday the 21st, the day after the inauguration. It also dealt with a few other things Trump was doing, and the press error in reporting falsely that the MLK bust had been removed.
The tone was angry, and I’m sure Spicer was angry. The anger was at the incredibly “gotcha!” coverage of the entire inauguration. One day into the administration and it was a flood of over-the-top criticism, and one clear lie/error (the MLK bust removal).
At the time Spicer spoke (4:30 PM on Saturday), there really wasn’t all that many specifics about exactly how big the crowds in attendance were. Now, that doesn’t mean that Spicer shouldn’t have been even more precise—precisely precise—about exactly what “audience” he was talking about. He should have been. But the media coverage had already—one day into it—been so relentlessly (and unprecedentedly) negatively slanted that it probably caused an emotional reaction.
I know I had one, and I’m not even a Trump fan.
That said, there is no question that the standards to which Trump and his people will be held will be nothing short of perfection (which of course is impossible). Even then, if the press can’t find a real flaw, they will make them up. In this case, there was a real lack of absolute precision. That’s going to happen, of course. I’m not at all sure how the Trump administration can make itself perfect in terms of every single word crystal clear; it’s just not possible.
Notice that they didn’t mention hhow much race relations had improved under Obama. Nor did they say how well the city he organized was doing WRT crime, shootings, and murders. They always let Obama get away with saying what he wants.
Big Maq,
Its called nitpicking.
neo-neocon,
The ‘fake news’ about the MLK bust was an opportunity to play the race card. Taking a few seconds to ask about the bust was apparently beyond the skill level of the reporter in his rush to smear djt.
As critical as I have been about djt, and will be in the future I am sure, the msm and the Ashley Judds of the wacko left seem intent on making me defend him.
“alternative facts” in science really means that one has to specify the range of uncertainty in ANY measurement. I love doing an exercise with students in the intro physics course lab: Everyone does a relatively simple measurement with simple devices and then all results are recorded on the board. Generally if there are 15 students we get 15 different values, all of which are “facts”. Not that anyone is trying to deceive with their measurements, it that systematic and random errors creep in, and so we get a range of values around a mean. The standard deviation is just a a measurement of the spread of the “facts”.
Of course not many journalism students take such a class.
The “crowd size” meme exists to deflate Trump.
Watching President Trump charm Big Labor and Big Business and the CIA is all too much to bear.
When you can’t produce the bread — at least you can bring the circus.
Perhaps physicsguy can help me out here…. I read The Discovery of France (A Historical Geography) by Graham Robb about 7 years ago. The book is an interesting read that details how France became over centuries the unified (sort of) nation we recognize today. One section deals with the creation of the meter and how a century later it was discovered the standard meter is off by .23 millimeters.
My point you may ask? We are not as precise as we may wish to pretend.
But we keep trying to become more precise, but never really achieving zero uncertainty:
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/meter.html
Now we are really parsing words. He should have said “combined” and not “both”?
The guy is standing up there in front of dozens of hostile people shooting questions at him–almost everyone of them loaded. And he honestly tries to answer them, all the while smiling. I am going to give him a little slack; more than a little. His performance is amazing.
My one complaint is that he engages them too much, rather than just telling them “I don’t know about that”; or “I am not ready to talk about that now”; or better yet, “that is irrelevant”. I say that, but I would not do what he does for a lot more money than he makes.
Of course, shills from NYT and New York Magazine were tweeting unsubstantiated rumors that he was about to be fired. Tweets from Twits. That is journalism. That is what he deals with.
Oldflyer:
When Spicer initially made the “both” statement, he wasn’t answering questions. He was addressing the press in a briefing, and didn’t take any questions.
given the thrust of Conway’s talk, clearly (to me) she meant, “There are alternate things to focus on.” “Alternate foci.” AS IN:
You could focus on the restoration of the Churchill bust, the smaller number of extravagant balls, the handing of the criminal parts of the protest, the tighter security that made it take longer for people to get in, the clarity of the speech, the weather, the racial composition of those who live nearby and probably attended, the matching blue gloves, the absence of scores of Democrat congress members, the question of whether Trump will change the wallpaper and carpet of the Oval Office as Obama did in 2009, who got the pens he used to sign, etc., etc. There are many things to focus on, many facts. The guilty part of the MSM picks the facts that maintain the fear and hatred.
“Two by two, hands of blue.” The left never stops on their mission to destroy Western Civilization. They never realize that if their dreams come true 99% of them will end up in the Gulag.
Of all the role models, Mencken, Pulitzer, etc. the media have chosen Jerry Springer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jerry_Springer_Show
Spicer said “420,000 people used the D.C. Metro public transit” during Trumps inauguration. He claimed Obama’s # was only 317,000. According to WaPo, the real #’s were 571K (Trump) to 783K (Obama). If WaPo is correct, these alternative facts are straight up falsehoods, not mere imprecise wordings.
He claimed magnetometers were used for the first time (keeping people out). WaPo demonstrates this to be false as well.
He said “This was the first time in our nation’s history that floor coverings have been used to protect the grass on the Mall.”
False again.
Manju:
Did you by any chance bother to actually read the transcript of the Spicer press conference?
Do you think that every single error a person makes is a lie or a “falsehood” (that seems like a synonym for “lie”—when I looked up the word “falsehood,” the third definition was “lying”)? Or is it only when Spicer or Trump makes an error that it’s a falsehood? Are any of Obama’s errors falsehoods? And what about when there is a dispute about the fact, or a source that turns out to be unreliable?
Is someone quoting such a source a liar?
Would a person saying they are liars be a liar?
To help you out, I’ll give you a relevant quote from the Spicer press conference:
The first Spicer statements about the metro were made about one day after the inauguration. Subsequently, their facts were corrected when they learned new facts.
Have you ever relied on a fact that you later had to revise due to new information? Were you lying (telling a “falsehood”) the first time? Or was it an error?
Nitpicking?
Had trump run a different campaign and not made several questionable claims, as he still does, and self-aggrandized his support in the polls, etc., then maybe.
This sin was getting baited on something small, and mishandling it in a dramatic fashion.
Anyway, I don’t like where this kind of stuff is all heading, despite the promising aspects elsewhere.
Big Maq:
Did you read the transcript of the Spicer press conference? It’s long, and I didn’t read every word. But I was quite impressed by it.
@Neo – did give it a quick review (text, not video) and he was much better prepared.
No doubt he was hurriedly serving a request by trump on Saturday. A couple of his remarks here seem to obliquely acknowledge that it didn’t go down the way he wanted.
But, yes, overall on target for where he needs to be.
Didn’t like his response to the hottest year on record question. By my understanding from elsewhere the actual difference was within the margin of error. It deserved a challenge, but I doubt it’s been on their radar of things to dispute.
We’ll see on the next baited challenge how it goes.
Remember, it is Jeff Bezos who now owns the WaPo.
He also just bought the former Textile Museum in DC, two combined houses that total 27,000 square feet. But he apparently won’t be staying there much after the renovation.
Something’s afoot. Maybe Bezos is going to buy Democrats, who are cheap at the present going rate.
The waters have become so hopelessly muddied with liars calling out other liars for lying, I wonder if benefit can accrue to any side in these kerfluffles.
My bet is that this stuff will be a constant chatter in the news for the next four years and it will mostly cancel out. Trump will rise or fall on his actions, as discussed recently.
It’s possible Trump’s happy warrior mudslinging will negate the MSM’s mudslinging, though we won’t be a more thoughtful, civil nation for it.
Big Maq,
Yes, nitpicking. I voted for djt, but all during the long, long campaign I found his demeanor offending, crude, and unbecoming a person seeking the presidency. However, that does not mean I will cut the msm .23 millimeters of slack when it comes to their distortions, omissions, and obvious lies.
For my own part, I find the msm far more offending, crude, and unbecoming than djt. It is the msm that is the greater threat to the survival of the republic compared to the crude bombast of djt. We are (IMO) standing on one foot at the edge of a totalitarian abyss; even one step back is a good thing. Trump today put a gag order on the EPA, that is a good thing.
Have no fear, little me will freely criticize djt in the days ahead when he oversteps the Constitutional limits of his office. I am an equal opportunity armchair finger pointer.
Big Maq and huxley,
News alert: We stopped being a civil society back in the 1960s. And you can thank the leftists for that. This crude, vulgar society did not suddenly erupt with djt. In fact, he is a product of the the 1960s abandonment of civility. Reap what is sown, sow what was reaped. One thing leads to the other.
Trump still looks a lot like the flip side of Obama to me.
Different politics, different styles, but both outsider/populist demagogues who found novel routes to the presidency based largely on cults of personality.
It turned out Obama was a marvel at getting himself elected and not much else. Not governing, not unifying the red and blue states, not improving race relations, not even getting other Democrats elected.
We shall see if Trump can govern as well as he plays games with the media.
huxley,
Djt is every bit as narcissistic as bho, no doubt about that. We will have to wait and see if he is as authoritarian as the messiah.
What is lacking, IMO, is the failure of congress to act as a co-equal branch of the federal government and mutiny of the judicial branch to invent ‘law’ out of air thinner than the atmosphere of the moon.
Ignoring the 9th and 10th over many decades is what has brought us to this present state of despair.
parker: There are many issues here.
I was thinking more along the lines that Obama’s shtick worked great on the campaign trail but not so much in the White House.
I’m wondering if the same will be true for Trump.
Your point is taken Neo, and in his first press briefing in the White House he used a questionable, or rather imprecise, choice of words.
I still am inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt until I have reason to do otherwise.
Today, the “Democrat operatives with press credentials” as Glenn Reynolds calls them, are in a snit because of the illegal voter claim.. I read, and could probably find it again, that a team of Professors in Virginia determined that 2.8 million illegal votes were cast in the 2012 election. I doubt that this one was better. Spicer’s staff has got to get up to speed and have that kind of information available for him when challenges occur. I hope they will.
Huxley: “Trump still looks like the flip side of Obama to me.” I don’t know what the “flip side” of Obama would look like; but, if you mean the opposite I agree.
I said many negative things about Trump during the primary and general election campaign. I am prepared to eat those words based on his performance since the election. The energy, the focus, the choice of people, the willingness to move against the tide are just very impressive. Yet he has reached out to a wide range of people; and seemingly is establishing rapport. He may surprise me again and validate my original negativity; but, so far so good.
I don’t know what the “flip side” of Obama would look like; but, if you mean the opposite I agree.
Oldflyer: By flip side, I mean the other side of the same coin, i.e. seemingly different but much the same.
He’s doing better than I expected but the hard part is still to come.
It was professors from Old Dominion/George Mason. Unfortunately it looks like their report is behind a paywall.
John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky wrote a book in 2012 about voter fraud.
Here’s a summary of the findings:
http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/poll-13-of-illegal-aliens-admit-they-vote/
Sheesh, people, Trump has been prez for 4 days. Though he has been blowing and going, unlike Barack in his first days, and has made a bunch of good moves, he has only just begun.
The speed of the change is remarkable. For the good and for the better. My hat is off to him, though I suspect Priebus should get some credit, like for the hiring freeze, and the checks on freedom of bureaucrats to undermine.
Trump is a savvy dude. His “public ruminations” while campaigning did not help, but we have clear signs of sound goals coupled with sound actions.
I am cheered. Thrilled, actually.
parker Says:
January 24th, 2017 at 6:33 pm
“Two by two, hands of blue.” The left never stops on their mission to destroy Western Civilization. They never realize that if their dreams come true 99% of them will end up in the Gulag.
* *
First time I’ve seen anyone make that connection.
It mystifies me that Whedon apparently wrote Firefly and Serenity without any internal understanding that he was glorifying anti-government-control individualists, since his personal politics are totally progressive-statism.
Here are a couple of reactions to the “what was he thinking!?” aspect of Spicer’s and Trump’s War of the Mall position. (split into two comments, emphasis added)
http://amgreatness.com/2017/01/24/what-was-sean-spicer-doing/
“While the game with the press is certainly part of what was going on here, something else was was happening–something more directly related to Trump’s brand of populism. As usual, it pays to think about how this sounds, in context, to the people who voted for him last November.
Looking at realistic estimates, Trump’s crowd was comparable to George W. Bush’s 2001 inauguration, in other words, as routine as inaugurations get. Neither was as large as Obama’s in 2009; the first African-American to be sworn in was guaranteed to draw huge crowds from the predominantly black capital city.
In short, they don’t tell us much we don’t already know.
However, by minimizing Trump’s crowd, emphasizing how small it was compared to the historic Obama inaugural, and simultaneously swooning over the “Women’s March,” in effect an inauguration-that-wasn’t for Hillary Clinton, the press is telling Trump’s voters that they don’t matter.
Ponder that. These Americans have spent years–decades, even–being told they don’t matter. They’ve spent the last six years electing Republicans to offices in every branch at every level of government, only to be told that the presidency is what really matters, and the coastal elites have an emerging majority Electoral College lock on that.
Then, even though they’re told they can’t win, and that it won’t matter, they show up when it’s supposed to count. They elect a president. They show up in person, and set live streaming records to see him take office. The president they elect says that he’s going to work to return power to them.
And then, that day and the next, the same people who’ve been telling them that they don’t count tell them that it’s all meaningless. An elite that cannot manage to win or keep a majority in Congress, in state governorships, in state legislatures, or even in county governments are still their betters and they still win.
So there was Sean Spicer, talking right to them through the assembled press corps.
By insisting that viewership–Spicer also separately mentioned people viewing remotely–was larger, Spicer was saying to them, in effect, “Yes, you do matter. The press is still trying to say that you don’t. President Trump is barely sworn in, and they’re already trying to get people to forget about you. But we know you matter.” It was the Trump version of Nixon’s appeal to the great, Silent Majority.”
AesopFan: I was shocked by Whedon’s attack on Paul Ryan … Paul Ryan!
I had assumed Whedon was a closeted libertarian taking a quietly contrary stand with “Firefly” and “Serenity”, but apparently not.
And the second one, a little more nuanced:
http://libertyunyielding.com/2017/01/24/team-trump-communication-battlespace/
“Let’s start with the example on everyone’s mind at the moment: the now-infamous debate over the comparative crowd sizes of the Obama inauguration in 2009, and the Trump inauguration last Friday.
In this very silly contretemps, I stipulate up front that Trump’s crowd was smaller. But that’s not what matters to the communication battle the Trump administration is fighting. What matters is that in setting the stage for the debate, the mainstream media initially made a deceptively exaggerated comparison, and implied that that comparison was definitive and politically telling.
We don’t know what Team Trump or anyone else — e.g., Trump partisans in the blogosphere — would have done if the crowd comparison had been made more straightforwardly from the start. It wouldn’t have been difficult to do. The tweet that got everyone’s panties in a wad compared the Obama 2009 crowd at its full strength to the Trump crowd at less than its full strength. An honest comparison would have put apples up against apples.
Eventually, NPR presented a fair comparison with a time-lapse video. It showed that the Trump crowd was smaller than Obama’s in 2009. The difference was visually significant. But it also showed that the Trump crowd was larger than the one in the viral tweet.
The more accurate comparison didn’t make quite as juicy a visual as the less accurate one. On Twitter and Facebook, the side-by-side images I continue to see circulated are from the original tweet. Clearly, the people excitedly forwarding that pair of images around are interested in something besides accuracy.
Team Trump has identified such prejudicially inaccurate themes as a problem to be addressed. Crowd size isn’t the basic issue; the issue is prejudicing the terms of the public debate. For years, the MSM have been getting away with slanting the terms of the debate in just this way: using little deceptions that seem too silly to bother calling them out on. What presidential administration wants to be involved in disputing crowd size, and the time at which photos were taken? How embarrassing, right?
But here’s the key. Team Trump’s deportment isn’t importunate and whining, as if it’s begging for more fairness from media that hold the high card. Nor have its spokesmen offered mere analytical criticism of the media’s methods.
Team Trump is going on offense. It’s taking the initiative; forcing the issue, instead of letting it go, because the principle at stake is not crowd size. The principle is what the media get away with, in terms of dogging and hobbling a presidential administration’s ability to communicate about policy.
Team Trump is fighting. This is what fighting looks like. It doesn’t look like the standard rhetorical set-pieces in which Republicans have an assigned role, and it’s always to be the chumps.
Notice, again, that I didn’t say Trump is doing it “right” here. I said he’s fighting, as opposed to not fighting.
I’ll say it one more time, with all the emphasis word processing can muster. Trump isn’t fighting about crowd size. He’s fighting about what the media expect to get away with.
What the mainstream media expect to get away with is their strategic center of gravity — and Trump is attacking it.
The MSM have been treating communication as a kinetic political war, with winners and losers, for decades. Instead of ineffectually declaring himself above all that, Trump is counterattacking on offense — not symmetrically or merely in reaction, but according to a strategy based on his own goals.”
This view is not entirely unrelated to Spicer’s own comments in one of his reactions to the press, essentially telling them off for being (to coin a phrase) “nattering nabobs of negativism”.
It also addresses neo’s observation about the new-style annotating of presidential speeches.
I don’t think anybody completely gets what is going on here. This is the picture that started everything:
http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/selectall/2017/01/20/20-national-mall.w710.h473.jpg
They ran with this picture trying. In fact, as of Monday evening, ABC was still running with this picture during the ABC World News. I surmise that they were trying to create a narrative that people don’t consider Trump their president because the election was hacked.
Otherwise, who cares who had a higher attendance? They were both well-attended.
Danny K:
I would wager just about everyone here knows about the photo, and knows what the attempted narrative is all about.
I’m not sure why you would assume otherwise.
If I had a nickel for every time I heard a politician promise “I’ll fight for you!” over the past 70 years I’d be Donald Trump’s landlord. Finally! A guy who knows how to throw a punch. I’m loving it.
2+2=4 and 1+3=4 are alternative facts
Neo:
I didn’t call Spicer a liar. I said his statements were false, but did not address whether or not he deliberately told falsehoods, i.e. lied.
The same cannot be said about Spicer however. He accused the media of “deliberately false” inaugural coverage.
In the process of trying to demonstrate that, he uttered 3 demonstratively false statements followed by a conclusion…
“This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration – period – both in person and around the globe.”
…that, even when interpreted charitably, simply goes from being demonstratively false to likely false. WaPo: “Combining the TV and online figures…still leaves Trump short of Obama’s 2009 numbers (and Reagan’s numbers as well).”
The certainty in which Spicer utters his speculative conclusion arguably transforms it into a falsehood too. To utter all these falsehoods in an angry lecture designed to demonstrate that the media was lying takes a lot of nerve.
Manju:
In my most recent comment to you, did you see the link I posted to the definition of the word “falsehood”? It is a synonym for “lie.”
You really ought to follow the links in my comments and my posts in order to understand what I’m saying and why I’m saying it.
Aesopfan, that’s a powerful narrative you describe, interesting insight.
Neo, one definition of falsehood is lie. But words have different meanings and “falsehood” does not necessarily mean lie.
Bill Clinton was a popular president, who passed NAFTA, and won reelection.
Bill Clinton banged his intern, lied about it, and as a result was impeached and disbarred.
These are two alternative sets of facts. Their relevance depends on the argument one is making. People marshal different sets of facts to support their arguments all the time. It is the entire basis of the legal profession. That Conway is able to speak about her argument in this way demonstrates (at the very least) a basic understanding of rhetoric that her detractors obviously (or conveniently) lack.
One plus three is four. That’s an alternative fact.
“Also, he seems to be making that case that he set Trump up to succeed — with an economy on relatively solid footing.”
You get that when the ship of state has settled on the bottom of the sea.
Part of Trum’s authority isn’t Constitutional, unless the Constitution is a mandate by God to do certain things. Part of Trum’s authority is his being worshipped as a god emperor by the Alternative Right. Much as they despised Hussein the Left’s Messiah and god emperor, now they wish for one of their own, that “fights for them”.
This may not be the de jure authority, but it is the de facto one that led to the rise of various factions.
Since Trum looks to be capable of entering DC alive, that’s one hurdle down. Some more to go.
“Alternative” is the Left’s MainSewerM’s idea of a dog whistle, to connect you peasant brains close to Bush II’s village idiot level, to the “Alt Right”. As in the Alternative Right.
Some free propaganda analysis from someone that studies propaganda, linguistics, mind control.
Manju:
But that’s what it usually means, and that’s what we’re talking about.
If your only point was to say he made an error, use the word “error.” And that point would agree with just about everyone else here, so why make it at all?
The only logical way your remarks make sense is if you meant “falsehood.” If you meant “error,” I don’t even get why you bothered to say it.
FWIW, Gateway Pundit has a story showing a CNN updated photo of the crowd size. It contains a gigapixel photo of the crowd from the Capitol itself to the Washington Monument. One can scan the crowd and zoom in to see incredible details of individual faces of the thousands of people on the Mall.
The details are amazing.
“We stopped being a civil society back in the 1960s.” – parker
Not sure to agree or disagree.
Don’t know how one measures all this, but there was a courseness / indecency that existed long before the 60s.
The difference, may be that folks don’t feel the need to contain themselves.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/01/22/luntz_i_was_called_a_fascist_glitter_thrown_in_my_face_i_never_thought_this_would_happen_in_this_country.html
What is reaped is what we find acceptable.
If we acquiesce to it, don’t hold accountable our side, then it is not the left’s fault.
It is our choice.
.
This is an escalation of some form of tit for tat, getting even, in many folks’ mind, it seems.
That not a winning strategy, as it loses focus on the real goals, and it devolves into a losing cycle of revenge.
I really don’t want to see any good things trump may accomplish get overshadowed by all this, and a resulting future backlash reversing all that good.
I will continue to expect better and hold accountable “our” side, in particular, while still aiming for the same for all sides.
The entire discussion is based on lack of info. Dept of Parks has a method of determining crowd size and has used it for years. The DPS shoots aerial pix of the entire area, then uses a well established algorithm to estimate attendance. It works to a +/- of 1000 people.
Just ask them, they were quite proud of the results during the Obama years. The upshot is the numbers can be easily had from a credible source. Why have they not offered the info?
Not “an error”. He made at least 3. And those 3 hit the high-bar of being demonstratively false.
Error usually means unintentional. Lies, intentional. I wasn’t addressing that issue, so I went with false/falsehood.
You’re comparing Spicer’s statements to “alternative facts” that are “presented all the time, particularly in cases in which certainty is impossible.” But such facts are presumably accurate, even if they do not make a compelling case.
Spicer in contrast made straight-up false assertions. AFAK he’s only retracted one of them. His conclusion
(largest audience both in person and around the globe) is demonstratively false if taken together. If combined, it’s still likely false.
Yet he has the nerve to describe it as a certainty, while accusing the Media of lying. Imagine if the guy who spread the MLK-bust falsehood didn’t retract it, said that it still could be true, and called the Trump admin liars. That’s pretty much where Spicer / Trump are on this issue.
Fact checking, nothing but presentation of putative alternative facts.
Trump and his acolytes quite often speak rather loosely. MSM pick that up and ignores benign characterizations and go with the worst king. Case in point “alternative facts” ha ha ha double speak, she meant lies.
huxley Says:
January 25th, 2017 at 12:22 am..
I had assumed Whedon was a closeted libertarian taking a quietly contrary stand with “Firefly” and “Serenity”, but apparently not.
* * *
There are a lot of those looks-like-libertarian
progressives in the movie biz. I still don’t know if they are clueless about the meaning of their works to the general public, or cynically milking the rubes.
It’s only been in the last three elections that I have realized how far some people’s personal politics diverge from their platinum-screen presentations.
Sperta Says:
January 25th, 2017 at 1:12 am
2+2=4 and 1+3=4 are alternative facts
* * *
“Base 8 is just like base 10, if you’re missing 2 fingers.”
and if you are speaking in binary,
“There are only 10 kinds of people in the world.”
Ben Says:
January 25th, 2017 at 4:10 am
Bill Clinton was a popular president, who passed NAFTA, and won reelection.
Bill Clinton banged his intern, lied about it, and as a result was impeached and disbarred.
These are two alternative sets of facts. Their relevance depends on the argument one is making. People marshal different sets of facts to support their arguments all the time. It is the entire basis of the legal profession. That Conway is able to speak about her argument in this way demonstrates (at the very least) a basic understanding of rhetoric that her detractors obviously (or conveniently) lack.
* *
Good point.
She should still have said something like “additional” rather than “alternative” but nobody’s perfect.
Watching the video in which Ms. Conway used the famous phrase, one could pretty easily conclude she intended to say the facts were in dispute and Spicer was presenting the facts as the White House saw them.