Crowley Refuses to Backtrack as Romney Surrogate Says Fact Check 'Not Your Place'

From Crooks and Liars:

CNN host Candy Crowley on Wednesday stood her ground and refused to backtrack as a surrogate for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney insisted that she had been "wrong" to fact check the GOP hopeful's claim that President Barack Obama had not referred to the attacks in Libya as "acts of terror."

While moderating Tuesday night's second 2012 presidential debate, Crowley had briefly stunned Romney when she undermined his claim that Obama had not taken the Benghazi attacks seriously. 

“He did call it an act of terror,” she had told the former Massachusetts governor.

More here.

As I've said here before, I don't watch presidential debates because, you know, they're not really debates.  Rather, they're media events, where candidates are judged in terms of how "presidential" they are, how good they look, instead of in terms of clash of opinion and ideas.  As a former high school debater, indeed, as someone who's taught high school debate, these things are just insulting to my intelligence.  I mean, they matter, in that presidential campaigns are these days more like advertising campaigns, pushing image and emotion, pushing a brand.  So how "presidential" a candidate is has some bearing on the overall election.  Of course, even that is cause for dismay.

But that's why this little moment in the second of the Obama/Romney debate trilogy is so interesting.  

Republicans have been "working the refs," whining relentlessly for decades now, about what Eric Alterman calls "the so-called liberal media."  And it's been a very successful strategy.  Mainstream journalists have settled into a sort of he-said/she-said approach to "objectivity," such that actual facts and truths must take a backseat to "balance."  That is, in the scramble to get conservatives to STFU about media bias, journalists have stopped calling out their bullshit, simply reporting what politicians say and then comparing it to what their opponents say.  As Paul Krugman once joked, a good contemporary headline about the Earth being round instead of flat would read "Shape of the Earth: Opinions Differ."

But here we have Candy Crowley doing the totally unexpected: she acted like a journalist is supposed to act.  She told the truth, instead of giving equal weight to both candidates' statements regardless of the facts.  I'm not sure why she momentarily abandoned the new "objectivity" in favor of the old objectivity, but it seems to have exposed how utterly comfortable Republicans have become with their recent ability to craft entirely new and fictional realities with their rhetoric.  Because they're totally freaking out on the fact that a reporter did her job.  That is, Republicans now believe they have a right to lie without consequence, which means that calling them on their bullshit is a grievous offense.  But that's where we are right now as far as big time American politics go.  Insisting on facts is beyond the pale.

I'm pleased that one reporter, at least, took her opportunity in the spotlight to push back a bit against this longstanding trend.  But I'm even more pleased by the pig-like squeals I'm hearing from Republicans in response.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$