Sunday, September 13, 2009

Nate Silver on the Tea Baggers Rally

FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Size Matters; So Do Lies

Nate dispassionately examines the attendance at and meaning of the "9/12" rally in DC, and how the truth of genuine grievances can be overshadowed by lies and poor judgment. Money quote:
The way this false estimate came into being is relatively simple: Matt Kibbe, the president of FreedomWorks, lied, claiming that ABC News had reported numbers of between 1.0 and 1.5 million when they never did anything of the sort. A few tweets later, the numbers had been exaggerated still further to 2 million. Kibbe wasn't "in error", as Malkin gently puts it. He lied. He did the equivalent of telling people that his penis is 53 inches long.


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