{"id":12634,"date":"2010-10-02T21:12:24","date_gmt":"2010-10-02T21:12:24","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-10-03T01:11:42","modified_gmt":"2010-10-03T01:11:42","slug":"will-media-let-superliar-whitman-get-away-with-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2010\/10\/02\/will-media-let-superliar-whitman-get-away-with-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Media Let Superliar Whitman Get Away With It?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back when Jacques Chirac was president of France, the media began calling him “superliar”<\/a> as a result of his frequent inability to tell the truth about the numerous scandals linked to him.<\/p>\n

It might be time to apply the label to Meg Whitman.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week Meg Whitman changed her story suddenly<\/a> on the issue of her housekeeper. On Thursday morning Whitman denied that either she or her husband had seen a letter from the Social Security Administration informing them there might by a problem with Nicky Diaz Santillan’s paperwork. When Gloria Allred produced the letter in question, with Whitman’s husband’s handwriting on it, the Whitman campaign suddenly changed tune, claiming that Whitman’s husband never told Meg about the letter. Uh-huh.<\/p>\n

That was bad enough. But at today’s gubernatorial debate in Fresno, Whitman told a whopper of a lie in response to a question about the housekeeper scandal – claiming that Brown put her up to it<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“The Nicky I saw at the press conference three days ago was not the Nicky that I knew for nine years,” Whitman said. “And you know what my first clue was? She kept referring to me as Ms. Whitman. For the nine years she worked for me she called me Meg and I called her Nicky. “You should be ashamed for sacrificing Nicky Diaz on the altar of your political ambitions,” Whitman told Brown.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let’s be very clear here: there is no evidence whatsoever<\/strong> that Brown was involved in this, certainly not that he “sacrificed her” to win the election. Whitman’s accusation here is one of the most stunning lies ever told at a debate in California. It certainly earns her the title of “superliar.”<\/p>\n

But Whitman told the lie because she thinks she can get the media to simply play along with it, repeat it uncritically as a “he said, she said” story and not tell the public that in fact Whitman has no basis to make this baseless charge against Brown, and that she is saying this only to try and minimize the damage to her own campaign.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the LA Times story I just quoted, by Michael J. Mishak and Seema Mehta, takes a “he said, she said” approach and does not tell readers anywhere that Whitman’s claim is baseless.<\/p>\n

Let’s hope that the California political media does the right thing and tells the truth about the story, instead of letting them be used as tools by the Whitman campaign.<\/p>\n

(Note: the debate is happening right now in Fresno; it will be televised on Univision stations across the state at 4PM. Click here to watch it online<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back when Jacques Chirac was president of France, the media began calling him “superliar”<\/a> as a result of his frequent inability to tell the truth about the numerous scandals linked to him.<\/p>\n

It might be time to apply the label to Meg Whitman.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week Meg Whitman changed her story suddenly<\/a> on the issue of her housekeeper. On Thursday morning Whitman denied that either she or her husband had seen a letter from the Social Security Administration informing them there might by a problem with Nicky Diaz Santillan’s paperwork. When Gloria Allred produced the letter in question, with Whitman’s husband’s handwriting on it, the Whitman campaign suddenly changed tune, claiming that Whitman’s husband never told Meg about the letter. Uh-huh.<\/p>\n

That was bad enough. But at today’s gubernatorial debate in Fresno, Whitman told a whopper of a lie in response to a question about the housekeeper scandal – claiming that Brown put her up to it<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“The Nicky I saw at the press conference three days ago was not the Nicky that I knew for nine years,” Whitman said. “And you know what my first clue was? She kept referring to me as Ms. Whitman. For the nine years she worked for me she called me Meg and I called her Nicky. “You should be ashamed for sacrificing Nicky Diaz on the altar of your political ambitions,” Whitman told Brown.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let’s be very clear here: there is no evidence whatsoever<\/strong> that Brown was involved in this, certainly not that he “sacrificed her” to win the election. Whitman’s accusation here is one of the most stunning lies ever told at a debate in California. It certainly earns her the title of “superliar.”<\/p>\n

But Whitman told the lie because she thinks she can get the media to simply play along with it, repeat it uncritically as a “he said, she said” story and not tell the public that in fact Whitman has no basis to make this baseless charge against Brown, and that she is saying this only to try and minimize the damage to her own campaign.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the LA Times story I just quoted, by Michael J. Mishak and Seema Mehta, takes a “he said, she said” approach and does not tell readers anywhere that Whitman’s claim is baseless.<\/p>\n

Let’s hope that the California political media does the right thing and tells the truth about the story, instead of letting them be used as tools by the Whitman campaign.<\/p>\n

(Note: the debate is happening right now in Fresno; it will be televised on Univision stations across the state at 4PM. Click here to watch it online<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1990],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1990"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-3hM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12634\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}