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Sunday, March 9, 2014

Media Matters Introduces Mythopedia to Debunk Wingnut Lies

"Mythopedia was created to serve as a resource tool to catalog and debunk the most common myths and lies of the wingnut media."…
Mythopedia 
America, something great this way comes: Mythopedia, a brand new fact check tool from the folks who bring you the truth about wingnut media dishonesty at Media Matters for America. Clearly, something like Mythopedia was called for given the sheer quantity of wingnut lies. Really, don’t you find it hard to keep up? I do, and I do this for a living.
Media Matters says “Mythopedia was created to serve as a resource tool to catalog and debunk the most common myths and lies of the wingnut media.” Mythopedia addresses 400 entries at launch but, of course, they point out that it will also be “continuously updated.” Good luck to them keeping up with wingnuts lies. I hope the folks at Mythopedia like long days and late nights.
Here is an introductory video to get you started. Trust me, you’ll be hooked in no time:
If you go to the main page you can follow a link to the full list of myths, for example the lie that Hillary Clinton was behind the smear that Barack Obama was educated in a madrassa.” The truth is that “the smear that Obama attended a madrassa originated on an obscure wingnut website.” If you want to know more, for example, if the wingnut you are dealing with wants proof that he will then ignore, you can click on “see entry” and learn that the website in question is InsightMag.com in 2007b and that CNN and other news outlets “quickly debunked the claim.” There are even citations, so you can show your wingnut friend the links to the relevant CNN and New York Times articles.
Don’t you love it when wingnuts lie, and then blame the lie on liberals? It’s like a wingnut BOGO: lie, and then lie about the lie.
I admit there are some initial frustrations using Mythopedia. I can think of bunches of things to search for that you won’t find here, like all the lies told about how President Obama has sold Israel out. As a matter of fact, Michele Bachmann went there just the other day, saying how disappointed she was in American Jews, because they voted for Israel’s arch enemy, Barack Obama.
As David Harris-Gershon pointed out at Tikkun Daily on Tuesday, if Obama is holding Israel back, how is it that “Israeli settlement expansion has increased by a stunning 123 percent in 2013″?
Unfortunately, if you search for Bachmann, who is a veritable lying machine, you will not find any results at all. If you search for Israel, you will find only four results. Obviously, there is a great deal more work to do, but it’s a great start, and as someone who spends a lot of time researching right wing propaganda, I’m wildly enthused by the project.
The good news is, that if, like me, you see something missing, you can click on “submit a tip,” which brings you to a screen where you input your email address and the tip, and submit. I can imagine there will be quite a few of these coming in.
The unfortunate thing for America, and the world really, is the wingnut refusal to see facts for what they are, rejecting reality and the evidence of their own senses in favor of their preconceptions. I do not think Mythopedia will help them. In my own experience, finding a wingnut willing to examine the facts today is as hard as finding Bigfoot. You read about them once in awhile, but you don’t actually see them yourselves.
On the other hand, and here I think Mythopedia will help, there are millions of independents out there who might be brought to the truth of wingnut's misinformation by projects like this. Facts do matter, and there are still people out there who realize this, but thanks to the conservative media elite, simply haven’t found them yet. So check out Mythopedia. Send it to your friends. Arm yourselves with facts and gird your minds for battle.

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