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Tuesday, October 06, 2009

It's about time someone took Betsey McCaughey to task
Posted by Jill | 9:22 PM
For months Betsy McCaughey has been doing the talk show circuit, armed with her Big Book and her voice training that allows her to filibuster just about anyone. She filibustered Jon Stewart into the ground. Take a look at Dylan Ratigan and Rep. Anthony Weiner debunking every bogus claim this insurance industry lobbyist makes, while she screeches "Unfair!" and plays the damsel in distress card:



This woman has never let anyone else get a word in edgewise when she appears on talk shows. She speaks with authority and filibusters and thinks that if she just spouts her crap loudly enough and long enough, it will be come truth. As Michelle Cottle notes at The New Republic:
Yes, McCaughey professes to have read the legislation currently circulating, and, as in 1994, she brandishes that fact like a talisman that can dispel any conflicting viewpoint. But, also as in 1994, she spins out an indefensibly sinister, apocalyptic translation of the text that no amount of countervailing evidence can shake. Thus, health care adviser Emanuel's theoretical writings about how to allocate scarce resources, such as human organs, morph into McCaughey's conviction that Obama's "deadly doctor" advocates denying treatment to the elderly and infirm on cost-benefit grounds. Likewise, a database to coordinate information on which treatments work best for which patients--an initiative supported by wonks across the political spectrum--is seen by McCaughey as the first step toward government-programmed computers ordering doctors how to do their jobs. Within the self-styled empiricist resides the mind of a pathological alarmist.

Asked why her analysis bears no resemblance to that of other experts regardless of ideology, McCaughey consistently responds, "My reading of the bills is correct." Even when it is pointed out that her interpretation is clearly hyperbolic--e.g., her fantastic assertion on Fred Thompson's radio show that "Congress would make it mandatory, absolutely require, that, every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner"--she will not budge. Ironically, her familiarity with the data, combined with her unrecognizable interpretation of it, makes it nearly impossible to combat McCaughey's claims in a traditional debate. Her standard m.o. (as "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart recently experienced) is to greet each bit of contradictory evidence by insisting that her questioner is poorly informed and should take a closer look at paragraph X or footnote Z. When those sections don't support her interpretation, she continues to throw out page numbers and footnotes until the mountain of data is so high as to obscure the fact that none of the numbers add up to what she has claimed. "It's impossible to keep up with the quantity of misinformation," laments Henry Aaron. "It's like being sprayed with muddy water."

And so far it's worked for her -- until today. Dylan Ratigan may be a bully, but Betsy McCaughey is his equal in bullying, except that Ratigan is trying to get a truthful answer out of this purveyer of horseshit, and McCaughey is trying equally hard to avoid giving one -- and to protect the industry she so dearly loves against the marauding hordes of ordinary American citizens.

More from Michael Stickings and Kate Harding.

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