Monday, February 07, 2011

Wingnut Math, Courtesy of The Daily Puker

Viewed in our favorite wingnut rag, The Daily Caller, where facts and figures are fungible and flexible — veeeeeery FLEXIBLE.

Remember Rush Limbaugh's repulsive racist rant on the occasion of the Chinese president's state visit? Well, in this hilarious wingnut whitewash of Limbaugh's racist insult of an entire people and culture, the writer (let's call him paisan) interpreted Limbaugh's racist diatribe as "Rush Limbaugh’s sarcastic imitation of the Chinese language." Um ... paisan, sarcasm is one thing; it can be biting, mocking. But when it's racist, when it derides an entire people's language and culture, then the racism takes precedence.

The paisan then did something really bizarre, and arguably racist. Certainly it was tasteless. But that's par for the course in Rightwingville. He actually took the time to publish the phonetic pronunciation of the garbage spewing from Rush's mouth:
“Normally, you’d have somebody translate every couple of words,” Limbaugh explained, “but Hu Jintao was just going ‘ching cha, ching chow cho cha, chan cha ching, chee ba ba ba, hon chong hee, ee kah ah ahh! Che, cheech eh! Jing ja, bo ba, ya ya, cha che cheech che! Cha gee! Doohhh, kit bah le bah!  Bah, cheech cho bah!’”
 Naturally, the paisan included a link to the video. But that's not all. Just as he was trying to make a joke out of Rush's racist rant, he wrote a skeptical account of the threat received by California state senator Leland Yee after Yee called on Rush to apologize. And, for good measure, paisan unilaterally minimized the level of public support for Senator Yee's petition to boycott Rush's racism, with this false assertion in quotation marks:

Actually paisan, this is what the link you provide to Senator Yee's site indicates in the headline and first paragraph:


Oops. Either the wingnut can't count or he just accidentally dropped a zero from the count. How convenient! Let's face it, wingnuts are expert undercounters, especially when stealing close elections. Or writing hit pieces.

In another hit piece written by Poor, Jeff  the wingnut blasts Rep. Anthony Weiner for "bizarre attack on Beck audience: ‘He has less than 300k viewers and so that’s about 150k shoes’" Okay, Anthony's attempt to make a joke may have fallen a bit flat, but I thought it was funny and so did Bill Maher! (Then again, I have an admittedly strange sense of humor ...)

The fun and frivolity begins when Poor, Jeff decides to make his point, by relying on fellow wingnut John Fund's numbers ... somewhat:
THEY'RE ALL WRONG!


First, to Poor, Jeff: Even if we grant Weiner the 200,000 extra viewers Poor did, he "grossly understated" Beck's audience by 1.262 million viewers — not the two million claimed by Poor, Jeff ... BECAUSE BECK POSTED 238,000 FEWER VIEWERS THAN TWO MILLION. Oops ...

As for John Fund ... Well, he was just 738,000 viewers off the mark. Liberals and progressives should know by now that wingnuts are just not that into accurate facts and figures. Whatever flies their kite is the figure they'll go with. Facts and figures are fungible in Rightwingville — they are the means to a propaganda end; that is, they are meant to provide a perception of accuracy with bogus figures to boost false wingnut arguments.

Memo to Poor, Jeff  and paisan: Anthony Weiner knows Beck has more than 300,000 viewers — he was being sarcastic ... Don't you get it?

Memo to the Pigman: Don't forget to order lots of takeout Chinese food. And make sure you give them your real name! 

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