Friday, February 19, 2010
Finally revealed: Timothy McVeigh was a tax protestor!
To implicate Taxed Enough Already in Joseph Stack's airplane attack on the Austin IRS building, AP reporter Jim Vertuno claims that the 1995 Oklahoma bombing was a tax protest:
So is Vertuno's mis-description of McVeigh's motivation a bald lie, knowingly misleading readers in an attempt to rewrite history more congenial to his presumptions? Or is this mere ignorant presumption by another of AP's leftist ideologues, assuming that whatever is most congenial to his presumptions must be the truth?
Either way, it is clear that he has no interest in what is actually true. If Vertuno does not know that he is misleading his readers it is only because he does not care whether he is misleading them, or he would have bothered to check. No shoe leather required. Just Google "McVeigh" and "motive." The first search result is from The New York Times:
Stack was actually a leftist, ending his manifesto with a paean to communism:
Does the baldness of the Vertuno and Capehart lies make them miscalculations? Not at all. Look at Vertuno's case. He gets his lie in the print edition of numerous papers, pretending that the Oklahoma bombing was a tax protest. Only a very small percentage of readers will remember 15 years after the fact what McVeigh was actually about, so Vertuno has a good chance of rewriting history for a lot of people. The only correction will come in the conservative blogosphere, where everybody already knows that AP can't be trusted. Thus he gets a lot of partisan mileage at very little cost, even for a straightforward lie.
Very simply, near monopoly control of the established media is a gigantic advantage, and those who are willing to use it for maximum propaganda value can achieve a lot. It is going to be a long road to take these dirtbags down.
The tax protest movement has a long history in the U.S. and was a strong component of anti-government sentiments that surged during the 1990s. That wave culminated in the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people. Several domestic extremists were later convicted in the plot.Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh said otherwise. Like Stack, McVeigh provided a manifesto of his motivations. In "Why I bombed the Murrah building," McVeigh said that he was avenging the slaughter of the Branch Dividians at Waco. (Other letters also mention Ruby Ridge.) He never mentions taxes.
So is Vertuno's mis-description of McVeigh's motivation a bald lie, knowingly misleading readers in an attempt to rewrite history more congenial to his presumptions? Or is this mere ignorant presumption by another of AP's leftist ideologues, assuming that whatever is most congenial to his presumptions must be the truth?
Either way, it is clear that he has no interest in what is actually true. If Vertuno does not know that he is misleading his readers it is only because he does not care whether he is misleading them, or he would have bothered to check. No shoe leather required. Just Google "McVeigh" and "motive." The first search result is from The New York Times:
TERROR IN OKLAHOMA - THE OVERVIEW - TERROR IN OKLAHOMA - THE ...Apr 25, 1995 ... Mr. McVeigh's motive appears to center on his extreme anger over the deaths of more than 80 people in the fiery assault in Waco, ...Misfeasance or malfeasance, it should be a firing offense either way. If AP were a real news organization, instead of a propaganda arm of the Democrat-left, Vertuno would be gone.
Stack was actually a leftist, ending his manifesto with a paean to communism:
The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.To pin him on the Tea Party, Washington Post contributor Jonathan Capehart deliberately misquoted Stack, omitting his paean to communism without the use of ellipses. As Ace notes:
The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.
This was no mistake. This was a deliberate alteration of a document in order to lie to the audience.Lies of omission (Capehart) or commission (Vertuno) are standard industry practice. Every day, our Democrat-dominated media spins every story for maximum partisan advantage. That means only telling the truth when there is no left-wing advantage in lying, or when lying spends too much of the media's dwindling believability to be the best way to serve their partisan ends.
Does the baldness of the Vertuno and Capehart lies make them miscalculations? Not at all. Look at Vertuno's case. He gets his lie in the print edition of numerous papers, pretending that the Oklahoma bombing was a tax protest. Only a very small percentage of readers will remember 15 years after the fact what McVeigh was actually about, so Vertuno has a good chance of rewriting history for a lot of people. The only correction will come in the conservative blogosphere, where everybody already knows that AP can't be trusted. Thus he gets a lot of partisan mileage at very little cost, even for a straightforward lie.
Very simply, near monopoly control of the established media is a gigantic advantage, and those who are willing to use it for maximum propaganda value can achieve a lot. It is going to be a long road to take these dirtbags down.
