The spat106 short longform #3

How to accuse people of lying when they’re not lying

Some people may say that this newsletter in similar in content to a certain column I did but I call them liars.
There have been recent instances of people accusing others of giving incorrect information but when they get asked to prove that is the case, they end up with faces like a stunned mullet (the fish and not the hairstyle).
These include people often deriding investigative journalist Nicky Hager’s findings as being just made up, despite him having proof or irrefutable evidence.
The other situation is Donald Trump casually saying that networks and newspapers such as CNN and the New York Times are FAKE NEWS even though the reports they provide are again based on facts. In the taller than the average Oompa Loompa’s case, anything that does not fit his narrative or puts him in a bad light he says is FAKE NEWS which ironically means he must be FAKE NEWS himself as he puts himself very frequently in unflattering positions. Democrats and the voters who voted for Hillary, which outnumbered the number people who voted for him prefer to call him BAD NEWS. His hands being as small as an Oompa Loompa is something the President cannot deny.

So how can we get people to believe a certain person or group is lying when in fact they are telling the truth?

One method is to treat the accusation, while not saying it’s false, as if it matters very little and think that the issue will blow away. This is known as the Mike Hosking treatment. After Dirty Politics and now the Hit and Run book, both written by Nicky Hager, Hosking thought the public cared little and no one would continue to talk about it in the days to come. Maybe it matters little to him but if you put a rogue plastic wrapper in his Ferrari his whole world burns down. No one ever saw such a clean freak as Hosking on television since Monica from Friends. And one has remember that Monica was a fictional character, so that shows what a pedant that Hosking is to cleanliness. One man’s rubbish is still rubbish to Mike Hosking, don’t fool yourself into thinking that he’d consider a soiled nappy left in his car as a treasure, even if it is a Treasures branded nappy.

The New Zealand Defence Force also had a bit of a distraction method where they stated the contents of the book Hit and Run were incorrect. This was almost derailed by the fact that in their press release headline they referred to Hager as Hagar. However this was pure genius by the NZDF because people who are reading the headline are wondering if the Hagar they are talking about is the cartoon character Hagar the Horrible or Sammy Hagar, who was lead vocals for the American rock band Van Halen. You’d remember Van Halen from the songs where they had David Lee Roth as their lead singer. The good thing for the NZDF is now the public won’t be wondering if the allegations about the civilian deaths & injuries are true but the public will now be more lkely spending time on the Van Halen discography Wikipedia page remembering those great hits.

There was also the method where the NZDF alluded to the fact a minor detail was incorrect but the main point of the allegation is still true eg they said a village stated in the book was wrong but civilian casualties still happened. “So civilian casualties happened?” NZDF:”Different village name though, that’s what you should focus on.” That’s like me accusing someone of kicking Greg’s nuts and NZDF saying no we kicked a guy named Bob in the testicles. I say you still kicked a man in the scrotum but their whole angle is that since I named Greg and not Bob, the issue of the matter of the nut kicking is secondary.

The last one is just the direct accusation of saying people are lying when they’re not, which is the go-to of the Trump administration. Well it is currently the go-to of this administration, that is until Press Secretary Sean Spicer is asked to prove what he is implying is false and just says the N-word for no reason, to a shocked press. This is another distraction method, the people hearing you make unsubstantiated claims that what another saying is false makes it look like you’re completely insane. It’s just like still claiming that the world is flat or that the NZ Warriors will make a NRL playoff series this year. If you believe something so much, then in your mind it is true, even if it’s not. So the same goes for the other way, when you believe something is false when it’s completely true then it’s false to you.