2024 US Presidential Election

[Belacqua]

I mean, we all accept that Fox can't be trusted. But then people will turn around and believe MSNBC or Anderson Cooper or whoever.

Fox News constantly promotes hate along the misinformation and targets minorities, but tell me how Anderson Cooper is bad. Like this new headline on Fox News is intentional misinformation on trans care. Fox News is citing the American College of Pediatricians, a misleadingly conversion therapy group that says wives should submit to their husbands

Here is what I said earlier about Fox:

we all accept that Fox can't be trusted.

My argument is this: just because Fox can't be trusted doesn't mean we should trust its competitors. It's possible for more than one thing to be bad.

[Rev. Rye]

The earliest case I know of was the false advertising lawsuit made by the Center for Science in the Public Interest against the Coca Cola company.

Coca Cola was marketing a drink called "Vitamin Water," with endorsements from athletes, which strongly implied that the drink was healthy. In fact it was mostly sugar water.

Coca Cola's lawyers argued that "no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitaminwater was a healthy beverage.” Because nobody should believe what ads say. In that case the judge wasn't satisfied with the argument, but standards appear to have slipped since then.

I suspect that there might be earlier examples of people/corporations using this sort of arguments in bad faith. That said, I know there are roots in a legitimate argument. Like this fake Campari ad that Hustler published:



Naturally, even if it was very much in the style of a then-current ad campaign for Camp, it should go without saying that anyone with two brain cells to rub together that there was no way that a famous Southern Baptist preacher would A) do a liquor ad, B) openly admit that he lost his V-card to his mother, and C) wouldn't end this ad by outright saying that he could only say the shit he does if he were drunk.

But Falwell sued for libel and lost because the ad was such an obvious fake that nobody in their right mind would take it seriously. 

Or this ad: 



Pepsi aired an ad where they said that, with 7,000,000 Pepsi points (with a cash value of $700,000), they could buy a Harrier Jet (estimated value at the time: $37.4 million). One person discovered the "cash value" loophole and sent Pepsi a check for $700,000 and change for the Harrier Jet. He sued when they didn't give him the Harrier Jet. The judge sided with PepsiCo because, despite this offer, the way this scenario was portrayed (seriously, a kid whose bollocks have barely dropped yet can land the Air Force's top fighter jet in his fucking schoolyard with ease? Also, even with this grainy VHS quality, it's clear that the plane's CGI) was so preposterous that they didn't think anyone should have been able to take it seriously. Nevertheless, they made a modified version of the ad where they both give it a more reasonable 700,000,000 Pepsi Point value (cash value of $70 million) and clarified that it was just a joke (plus, apparently, due to regulations, the Harrier Jet could only be sold to civilians if it were "Demilitarized," which would have required it be stripped of its ability to take off vertically or land).




Evidently, some less scrupulous lawyers saw a Get Out of Jail Free Card with this defense and applied it with everything.

[Belacqua]

Evidently, some less scrupulous lawyers saw a Get Out of Jail Free Card with this defense and applied it with everything.

Remember Joe Isuzu? I thought those commercials were great. And very meta, because they're playing on the idea of dishonest advertising. 

You make a good point -- the existence of such obvious fakes opens the door to the argument that nobody would ever believe any of them. 

And while I think the legal argument is pretty slimy, it's true that a person has to be pretty naive to believe what the TV tells them.

[Angrboda]

Fox News constantly promotes hate along the misinformation and targets minorities, but tell me how Anderson Cooper is bad. Like this new headline on Fox News is intentional misinformation on trans care. Fox News is citing the American College of Pediatricians, a misleadingly conversion therapy group that says wives should submit to their husbands

Here is what I said earlier about Fox:

we all accept that Fox can't be trusted.

My argument is this: just because Fox can't be trusted doesn't mean we should trust its competitors. It's possible for more than one thing to be bad.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I have been known to say things the are factually wrong that I should have known were wrong. That must mean I have dementia, eh?

I think the reason Biden gets a harder evaluation on this measure is that unlike Trump, his mannerisms suggest that he's elderly.

They’re both daft, but I’ll take ‘daft and well-meaning’ over ‘daft and essence of distilled evil’ any day.

Boru

[Foxaèr]

"My memory is fine," he insisted in a surprise news briefing.

BBC

[Mister Agenda]

I have been known to say things the are factually wrong that I should have known were wrong. That must mean I have dementia, eh?

Once every now and then? No. If you do it routinely and consistently enough? Then yes, there is a significant probability you do. 

I understand why so many liberals on here don't realize how bad his mental acumen really is. Not your fault. If you're a mainstream lib, you watch liberal cable news and your algorithms are classified as "moderate Democrat." You won't see any really bad Biden moments because your choice of news outlets and social media algorithms sheltered you from them. 

Just like the conservatives won't see Trump's dumbest moments.

You sit here and think, "How the hell can anyone vote for Trump, he is so clearly braindead?" Guess what they're thinking? "How the hell can anyone vote for Biden, he is so clearly braindead?" Unfortunately I think both sides are right. You know who doesn't come across as braindead? Bernard Sanders. Oh lord, what could have been in 2016...

I'm aware of Biden's life-long stutter, it has made him a gaffe machine his entire career.

[Mister Agenda]

I have been known to say things the are factually wrong that I should have known were wrong. That must mean I have dementia, eh?

It depends on how often you do this, and how disjointed your speech is. 

Recent video shows that Biden's problems go beyond slips of the tongue.

He's had a stutter his whole life and uses word substitution as a way to cope. Did you factor that in to your professional diagnosis?

[Mister Agenda]

If you're a mainstream lib, you watch liberal cable news and your algorithms are classified as "moderate Democrat." You won't see any really bad Biden moments because your choice of news outlets and social media algorithms sheltered you from them. 

Just like the conservatives won't see Trump's dumbest moments.

You sit here and think, "How the hell can anyone vote for Trump, he is so clearly braindead?" Guess what they're thinking? "How the hell can anyone vote for Biden, he is so clearly braindead?" Unfortunately I think both sides are right. You know who doesn't come across as braindead? Bernard Sanders. Oh lord, what could have been in 2016...

This extreme siloing of information is really unfortunate. It's as if two separate realities exist side by side, and neither one is accurate.

I mean, we all accept that Fox can't be trusted. But then people will turn around and believe MSNBC or Anderson Cooper or whoever. Rachel Maddow's lawyers use the same arguments in court that Tucker Carlson's make: she doesn't have to tell the truth because everyone knows it's just entertainment and no sane person would believe her. 

There are still people who believe all that Russiagate nonsense. There are still people who think Hunter's laptop was fake. 

And I agree with you about Sanders. Even at our most cynical, if we think he was just saying those things and didn't mean them, it's a pleasure to hear somebody stand up and let us imagine government doing what it ought to do.

I would really love to see the quote of Maddow's lawyer claiming that no sane person would believe her. I can't seem to find it on the internet. Just something about her show being opinion, which I presume we all knew.

[Belacqua]

It depends on how often you do this, and how disjointed your speech is. 

Recent video shows that Biden's problems go beyond slips of the tongue.

He's had a stutter his whole life and uses word substitution as a way to cope. Did you factor that in to your professional diagnosis?

He doesn't have a stutter. That idea was invented during the last campaign. 

He has a decades-long career in Washington. There are many videos. If you can find one from before the last campaign in which he stutters or appears to search for a word, please give us the link. 

For example, on YouTube you can find the speech in which he resigns from the 1987 presidential campaign, after he was caught plagiarizing a speech. He speaks at a normal speed, with no stutters, in an articulate manner.