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Originally Posted by SuzeQuze
Okay, you just proved Josh's point. Al mentions that people aren't going to flip to the end notes. So when Ann says that "Even during the media's nightly flogging of Iran-Contra, Reagan's approval ratings fell only 5 percentage points, from 80 percent to 75 percent." She is lying because his approval ratings actually "fell from 63 percent to 47 percent." It was his "personal popularity" that "fell only from 80 percent to 75 percent.", NOT HIS APPROVAL RATING. Do you see this distinction and why she isn't being honest?
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Yeah, I did note the words
approval rating.
However, now I point out to you. . .note that she did NOT say "JOB approval rating", which is what the 63 to 47 percent numbers tracked.
Now note the full context of the paragraph in which she cited this datum. She was talking about how much the general public loved Reagan. Now note the rest of the endnote, i.e. -
'The second reflects the public's actual feelings toward the President.' Since she was talking about how much the public loved Reagan, not Reagan's policies and performance, she used the second set of numbers from that poll. Which showed a personal popularity decline of 5%, from 80 to 75.
The only thing Coulter was guilty of was assuming that people would understand the context of her premise here. Or, put more simply, she was guilty of poor wording, and therefore being (slightly) unclear. Not lying. And the fact that people "don't check endnotes" is her fault how?
Al is not a stupid man - I doubt that he could have missed this. So, since the full quote would have left people scratching their heads and wondering where she lied, he twisted the passage and the endnote by taking it out of context. And I submit that he did so KNOWINGLY; that's lying through commission (knowingly out of context) and omission (not giving the full quote). Wow, a twofer. In a book that purports to face down a bunch of liars with the truth. Yeahhhh. . .ummmmm. . .does anyone else see the irony here?
Now in his defense, I do find endnotes to be rather irritating. Footnotes ARE much easier to follow. But he really cannot complain because Ms. Coulter prefers endnotes, most likely because it is an easier format to work with.