Our side can be awful as well
Some conservative reactions to Paul Pelosi’s attack hurts the cause
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Dear Friends —
I routinely tell you about the media’s manipulation of reality, but the reaction by some conservatives to the Paul Pelosi attack needs to be condemned.
I’m guessing my reaction after news of the attack was typical.
My first thought was for an elderly man who was bludgeoned and deserves sympathy. It didn’t take long, though, for me to wonder how one random attack might affect the midterm elections, and to silently hope that the attacker didn’t share my views.
We saw a mixture of bad reporting, intentional manipulation, and activists spreading the falsehoods.
Let’s start with the bad reporting. In the early hours, some of the facts were just wrong:
The attacker was wrongly reported by KTVU to be in just his underwear. (He wasn’t.)
Others reported “no apparent break-in.” (This pic shows that’s clearly wrong.)
Others said Pelosi knew the assailant. (Police say he didn’t. He used the word “friend” in the 911 call, but it’s pretty reasonable to guess that he was trying to calm the hammer-wielding psycho who was in his bedroom.)
Still others wrongly reported that there was a third person who answered the door for the police. (The police themselves were a little confused as well at first.)
As big stories unfold, it’s common for mistakes to occur, and it’s not always reporters to blame.
Why? Think of the old “telephone” game, where each retelling of a story becomes less accurate.
A man calls 911 and relays a situation where he may or may not know everything that’s happening. The operator then relays that information to police, who later submit what they experienced in a written report. In a newsworthy situation, they verbally tell the story to their bosses, and the police press liaisons tell the press.
At every level, there are opportunities for someone to mishear, misspeak, or have their ambiguities misunderstood. Here’s an example:
This just isn’t true.
The officer actually said: “Our officers observed Mr. Pelosi and the suspect both holding a hammer. The suspect pulled the hammer away from Mr. Pelosi, and violently assaulted him with it.”
The first sentence had some ambiguity, does “both holding a hammer” mean the same one or two? Yet the second sentence clears that up.
The fact that this tweet is still live is where a potential mistake turns into intentional manipulation.
The right has large sites, and voices, that don’t mind spreading false information.
The false Pelosi accusations – that the attack was a lover’s tryst gone wrong – largely started at Gateway Pundit, a news site that draws about 30 million monthly visits.
Here’s one example of their incorrect reporting: When the story first broke, they wrongly reported that some of the attacker’s web pages had been created after the attack.
This is 100% wrong. The Gateway Pundit looked at an internet archive service called The Wayback Machine and saw that the first mention of DePape’s site was the day of the shooting. But that only meant that was the first day someone submitted the site for archival, not when it was created.
The site is doing what it can to push the “lover’s tryst” angle, and it’s shameful. (I stopped reading them in 2020 when they similarly mislead their readers about the election results.)
Another awful site, the Santa Monica Observer, outright invented fake details of Pelosi's supposed drunken fight with DePape, describing him as a male prostitute. I won’t refute its nonsense on a point-by-point basis, but the author should be shamed and then shunned.
Those mistakes and intentional lies then get repeated by people who should know better.
There are now Republican candidates, officials, and pundits spreading this nonsense. Here’s Dinesh D’Souza, who wants us to trust him about potential fraud in the 2020 election, embarrassing himself:
And finally, there is Donald Trump, and his son, Don Jr.
The former president appeared on a radio show, saying that “weird things” were happening in the Pelosi house, and implying the glass door was broken from the inside. (Living near San Francisco, I’ve seen many broken car windows spew glass everywhere.)
Then his son posted this:
Here’s why this matters.
When our side embarrasses itself through lies and mockery, our side loses.
We're not fighting an actual war against enemies, we’re waging political disagreements with fellow Americans.
The only way to win is to convince other Americans that we're right. Inventing awful scenarios that smear an elderly man who was attacked with a hammer doesn't help our side, it hurts it.
— Ken
I agree that the “assumptions” were wrong. On another note, all we need to do is look in our mailboxes before the election. The fliers here in Southern California are vicious! I have NEVER in my 63 years seen such crap! Both sides are playing veryugly games. It’s only going to get worse. Buckle your seatbelt!
Great post, Ken. This ugliness is the consequence of extreme polarization and a reflexive distrust in every traditional source of information. It's leading the conservative movement into a very dark and nasty place, full of lies and kooky conspiracy theories. Thanks for highlighting this.