The Associated Press Invokes Monica Lewinsky

      We talked about this earlier-Krugman's orgy of false equivalence. Who knew that it would get this bad? Did even Krugman see this coming?

      http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-associated-press-orgy-of-false.html

      Broadly, of course he did. But did he foresee that the Associated Press would taunt "Monica Lewinsky!" to question Clinton's credibility?

      Now, they are actually doubling down and feel this is legitimate:

      "The Associated Press defended its invoking of the Monica Lewinsky scandal in a Thursday fact-check of former President Bill Clinton's speech, amid criticism of its relevance to a point Clinton was making about welfare."

    "During his Wednesday night speech, Clinton criticized a Romney campaign ad for falsely suggesting that the Obama administration has ended work requirements for people on welfare and noted that a Romney pollster recently said their campaign would not be "dictated by fact-checkers."

   "Now that is true," Clinton said. "I couldn't have said it better myself -- I just hope you remember that every time you see the ad."

      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/06/ap-defends-bill-clinton-fact-check-lewinsky_n_1862014.html

     Now there is no question that Romney's pollster said this. So how is their anything to be "fact checked?" Turns out because Clinton lied about Monica Lewinsky back in the 90s-though it was none of our business:

     "Clinton, who famously finger-wagged a denial on national television about his sexual relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky and was subsequently impeached in the House on a perjury charge, has had his own uncomfortable moments over telling the truth. "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," Clinton told television viewers. Later, after he was forced to testify to a grand jury, Clinton said his statements were "legally accurate" but also allowed that he "misled people, including even my wife."

      "The AP's fact-check -- which attracted criticism Thursday from The Atlantic Wire, The Nation, ThinkProgress and others -- suggests that because Clinton lied in the late 1990s, he isn't justified in calling out another politician or campaign for producing an ad that's untrue."

     "Mike Oreskes, senior managing editor for U.S. news at the AP, responded to a question about the relevance of the Lewinsky reference in a statement to The Huffington Post."

    "The reference was not about that woman, Miss Lewinsky," Oreskes said. "It was about facts. Clinton challenged the Republicans for their attitude toward facts. We were simply pointing out that as president Clinton had his own challenges in this area."

    "The AP took heat from conservatives last Thursday for its fact-check of Paul Ryan's speech during the Republican National Convention. At the time, Oreskes told The Huffington Post that "when we do it to one candidate, the people who support that candidate feel their candidate's been singled out." And he noted that the AP would be "doing it with the Democrats" this week."

     I don't think I've ever seen such an egregious false equivalence-considering the source is the AP. What they seem to be suggesting is that no one who has ever told a lie in their lives can question Romney's team for saying they don't care about the facts.

     It's kind of the ultimate he who is without sin. However, this takes us to an absurd position. This means that the people who wrote this article must vouch that they never lied about anything great or small in their own lives or they have no right to even do a fact check...

     Talk about a reductio absurdem argument. So Krugman's worry that the media would overdo it to be "balanced" has been realized to a greater extent that perhaps even he imagined.