Thursday, July 05, 2007

Another Eye-Roller from Media Matters

Up to its old tricks, Media Matters' latest "gotcha!" moment screams that Neil Boortz lied that Bill Clinton was convicted of perjury.

As Blue Crab Boulevard points out, this is hair-splitting of the worst kind.

Because rather than being "convicted", Bill Clinton directly admitted in a sworn plea agreement that he had lied under oath. Period. No "conviction", per se, although the typical media shorthand calls that a conviction. No, this was a flat-out admission of guilt to avoid the conviction that would have occurred had the matter gone to court - which even Media Matters must know - otherwise why would Clinton have made the plea bargain?. Clinton admitted his guilt, in public, with no parsing and with no tortured reasoning trying to push an elephant or a camel through the eye of a needle.

So, while Media Matters is technically correct that Clinton wasn't convicted, Clinton surrendered his law license and paid a fine because he committed perjury.

I've written before about Media Matters' habit of completely mischaracterizing comments, viewpoints, and positions of conservatives. This is just the latest example.