Rachel Maddow Reams PolitiFact -OR- Why I Can't Watch Rachel Maddow Anymore

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I've waited so long to hear someone with a national voice utterly destroy PolitiFact for their ass backwards brand of fact checking that involves, among other things, including every possible interpretation of the statements they "fact check" in their final analysis of how true said statements are.

Along comes Rachel Maddow to show me why I had to stop watching her in the first place by doing just a horrible job of depantsing PolitiFact.

Does she outline the ridiculous reasons PolitiFact uses in their analysis of this statement (let alone other statements)?  Barely.  Does she bring in other examples of PolitiFact's overwhelming desire to appear as moderate/neutral/impartial (read: middling) as possible stomping all over any ability to truly be any sort of neutral arbiter of factual information?  Surely you jest.  Instead, in true Rachel Maddow form, she engages in a dizzying, circuitous exercise of contemptuous, condescending verbal gymnastics specifically designed to do nothing more than rhetorically ridicule and publicly shame the object of her disdain.  It's the kind of bloviating you expect to hear out of someone like Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly except it's coming from the left and I just can't take it anymore.

I used to love Rachel Maddow.  I used to look to her as a voice of reason in cable news, someone with integrity and intelligence enough to engage viewers in serious intellectual debate.  But I guess since the departure of Keith Olbermann, someone has had to take up the mantle of arrogant condescension and shock value shaming and blaming.  It's the same reason I could never watch Ed Schultz or Al Sharpton.  Chris Matthews is almost as bad but at least he engages in some semblance of debate even if he always thinks he's right.  As tired as I am of the Republicans and their nonsense, I'm almost equally tired of people on my side constantly condescendingly implying that liberals/progressives are always right about everything and Republicans are fundamentally flawed and consistently wrong, dumb, and/or evil.  There is wisdom on both sides of every issue and the more we deny that, the more polarized we will be, and the less we will be able to accomplish.

Here's a link to an article online (on a website that uses the word "liberal" five times in its header alone) heaping praise on Maddow for "nail[ing] PolitiFact to the wall": http://samuel-warde.com/2013/05/rachel-maddow-nails-politifact-to-the-wall/

 Here is the video of Maddow ostensibly "nail[ing] PolitiFact to the wall"...


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