Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] is it possible to define "a lie"?

[Stephen Montgomery-Smith <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Thu, 1 Mar 2007, Mike Miller wrote:

> On Thu, 1 Mar 2007, Stephen Montgomery-Smith wrote:
>
> > Mike Miller wrote:
>
> > > So you look into it and you find the he is "not being quite the totally up 
> > > front guy he claims to be" which is euphemistic for "O'Reilly's persona is 
> > > all a charade," or even "O'Reilly seems to be a liar."
> >
> > Yes, but a great many people engage in this kind of deception about who 
> > they really are, and many of them do so unconsciously, even to the point of 
> > self-deception.  It is by no means clear to me that O'Reilly does this on 
> > purpose.  It is rather like bias in the media - it is quite likely that at 
> > least some of it is there by mistake.
> >
> > I am sure that some people do it in a cold calculating fashion, and others 
> > don't.  But which O'Reilly does is hard to say.
> >
> > But it is also, to some extent, immaterial.  Really the proper way to 
> > assess O'Reilly is to listen to the message, and analyse that, not to try 
> > to analyse the messenger.
>
> Well, our topic was O'Reilly.  If you watch O'Reilly you will see that one of 
> his favorite topics also is O'Reilly.  If you want to listen to the message, 
> be my guest.  I'm not very interested in his message -- why should I be?  But 
> if he has an important idea, and someone tells me about it, I'm happy to 
> listen.

OK, but my point was not to suggest that you listen to O'Reilly, but to so 
that the proper way to judge him is on the basis of his message.  When I 
first saw the book title "Liars and the lies they tell," I assumed that it 
would be chock-a-block full of how O'Reilly and such like lie with their 
message, not a list of their minor character defects.  If O'Reilly had a 
habit of making blatantly false assertions about the world around him, 
that to me would be a lot more newsworthy.  As it is, the defects pointed 
out are kind of similar to the question you asked about Clinton's lies - 
how do these affect his professional abilities?  My sense is that Al 
Franken put way too much attention on the ANS-like aspects of Bill's life, 
and not enough on the substantive issues.

Stephen


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