Maddow Goes Postal Because FACTS MATTER

Been posting a lot of my thoughts on Facebook lately, which is why this blog has seen so little time from me this year.  Sorry.  But this time I'm linking from FB to here because I need the space.  That being written...

Rachel Maddow hit the roof on her show Wednesday night.  Didn't catch it?  Neither did I, but a Kos poster named Exurban Mom did.  Read her transcript attempt.  The video for the rant is here.   The video leads off with Maddow talking about Romney's credentialing of Jerome Corsi, he of the World Net Daily (don't expect me to link there, are you fucking kidding me?) and calls for Obama's birth certificate (and, now, Obama's a "secret gay married murderer").  However, at about 8:40 of the 10:15 clip, Maddow says the following, which is a huge point worth discussing:

Part of the reason I think this country would be better if the website Politifact didn't exist is because Politifact has encouraged relativism, on the subject of whether or not stuff happened, as a mainstream thing.  So, like, when Mitt Romney wrote an op-ed entitled "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" and he went on CBS News and defended his call to let Detroit go bankrupt, including that headline, Politifact fact-checked whether or not Mitt Romney did say, "Let Detroit go bankrupt."  And they found that HALF TRUE!  Because basically they don't think that Mitt Romney likes to be quoted saying, "Let Detroit go bankrupt." Or something.  Even though he did.  So... "half true?"  Politifact last night looked into whether or not President Obama used the phrase "act of terror" the day after the Benghazi attack when he gave that speech in the Rose Garden.  [cuts to clip of President Obama saying, "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation."]  Politifact, in its assessment, said, "Oh, yes, he did say that, but it's really only HALF TRUE because people on the right say maybe he didn't mean it when he said it.  This infection is leaving the conservative media, through purportedly neutral arbiters of fact like Politifact. These baldly false, conservative, "feel-good" assertions about knowable facts that come from the right, end up becoming just "the other side of a political issue... we're taking an 'objective look.'"  And that is BULL.  Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.  The unemployment rate is below eight percent. The day after the Benghazi attack, the president called it an "act of terror."  Do whatever you need to do to make yourself feel better, but do not confuse your WorldNet-Daily-caliber-therapeutic-conservative-alternative-reality-fantasy-BABBLE for what actually happened.  Because stuff really does actually happen.  And eventually, you really do have to deal with it.

As I've been writing all week, FACT MATTER.  TRUTH MATTERS.  REALITY MATTERS.  Of course, spin happens on both sides of the aisle, and in all of life's wonderful situations: between parent and child, husband and wife, boss and employee, customer and business.  But at some point we all have to acknowledge that our spinning does not alter facts.  It does not alter reality.  Oh, for some like Karl Rove, who proclaims that he and his ilk create their own reality, and that the "reality-based community" can do nothing but sit back and watch, reality can actually be altered.  Just not how he thinks it can.  He may think the world is seeing reality through the lens he creates, but it's just a filter.  On film, a soft focus filter can make an aging, wrinkled actress look younger and more beautiful.  On stage, a colored gel turns a white light blue, or red, or green, or yellow.  And on Fox News, a decent, hard-working, mixed-race, Christian, capitalist President of the United States can be turned into a white-people hating, do-nothing, Chicago-ghetto-trash, terrorist-fist-bumping Muslim socialist Nazi who may or may not be constitutionally eligible to hold the office.  In real reality, the US was acting like a war-mongering, oil-grabbing imperialist, instead of Rove's version: a spreader of democracy. 

We'll tell ourselves all day long that up is down and black is white, but it won't change what IS.  The "reality-based community" actually owns the high ground in this election, while the Romney-ites desperately scramble for some semblance of relevance.  But, until they face reality, they're nothing but a sham.