“Fact Checker” #FAILs Yet Again

Last June, I pointed out several examples of #FAILures by PolitiFiction Politi#Fail PolitiFact.

For instance, there wathis hack job on Bob McDonnell’s job. Then there was this pathetic attempt at “balance” that was anything but. There’s also this hack job on Terry McAuliffe. And then there’s this one, in which PolitiFact puts on the kid gloves for poor wittle Wobert Hurt.

Then there was the last straw, PolitiFiction’s egregious Jon Stewart/Fox “News” #FAIL.

So, given that PolitiFact has obviously #FAILed, perhaps we could switch to another fact checker, maybe FactCheck.org? Alas, no, as this post explains in gory detail. The gist of it: FactCheck.org got bullied by the Romney people regarding the Washington Post story about Willard, Bain Capital, and outsourcing of American jobs. In response, instead of telling the Romney campaign to take a flying leap off a tall cliff, FactCheck.org instead cravenly caved, concocting an utterly outlandish story in order to help Romney slither off the (slimy) hook, then threw a hissy fit when factually – and correctly – challenged by the Obama campaign about what they’d done.

The bottom line conclusion of all this? What FactCheck.org did doesn’t pass the smell test, let alone the facts, such as that, by Romney’s own admission, he was CEO of Bain Capital and had 100% control as late as 2001. I know; details, details! (see the “flip” for more on FactCheck’s #FAIL)

[Brooks Jackson of FactCheck.org]  walks through this entire kerfuffle with the mind of a Talmudic scholar less concerned with practical reality than a theoretical and legalistic interpretation with the sole aim of rehabilitating Romney and giving him some talking points to rebut Obama.

The real scandal here isn’t what Romney did or didn’t do at Bain or how the Obama campaign framed that in ads. The real scandal is that the Romney campaign shopped around and finally was able to co-opt someone at factcheck.org into spinning it his way, proving what we should already know: Facts don’t matter. They certainly ought to, but they don’t.

But hey, Romney gets some lukewarm talking points out of it, even if he did have to squeeze the facts until they screamed. Good luck trying to sell that to actual workers who suffered the actual impact of the Bain Capital Profit Model.

Let’s hope that last sentence is the case, but what makes me so angry here is that organizations claiming to be checking on the “facts” are themselves so sloppy, lazy, subjective, biased, and craven. I mean, the corporate media’s horrendous enough without adding another layer of phony “fact checkers” to the stinking, steaming pile. Yet that’s exactly what’s happening these days, certainly with regard to Mitt Romney’s sordid past (massive tax evasion, screwing over American workers, bullying, pathological lying, refusal to make his tax documents public, etc, etc.).