On Tuesday, Jay had a guest: Betsy McCaughey, former lieutenant governor of New York. I thought the exchange was interesting because McCaughey was raving about the benefits to society of Medicare over the past 40 years, and she was troubled that the new health care reform package being debated would represent a step backwards. Jay, meanwhile, didn’t mention his own opposition to Medicare until I called him on it.
But it turns out the really interesting piece is that McCaughey has been making the rounds on the talk show circuit peddling a lie. On Tuesday she said something very much like this:
The health care reform bill "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."
That quotation is taken not from a transcript of Jay’s Show but from a spot the previous week with Fred Thompson. PolitiFact has rated that claim “Pants on Fire.”
5 Comments
I didn’t hear this speaker, but I heard 5-10 minutes of Jay’s show last night. The whole thing seemed to be scare tactics. Jay was speaking with absolute authority about the horror of the health care bill passing, while all along I was wondering which, if any, of his statements could be verified. I think that Jay is starting once again down the slippery slope of anger/excitability without fact checking. His anger is showing in other areas, too. He brought up Hillary Clinton the other night, and said that Clinton was representing the United States of America in THAT ORANGE PANTSUIT. He has been raving about FAT bureaucrats, both men and women, trying to push health care reform down our throats, so how long can it be before he uses that slur on Clinton again? And in this week’s discussion of health care, I also do not care for Jay’s inane discussion of “stew bums” receiving the same health care as he receives from his doctors. I did have to laugh, though, when he told a disabled veteran attending nursing school that veterans’ healthcare and college costs should be free, and he would be happy to pay for those costs. They should take him up on that one!
Have not listened to Severin since his return, but happened upon him when Jim and Margery brought him onto their show to let him introduce his subject. He started off telling the audience that Obama is “disgusting”, then went on with his thesis that the question asked by Lynn Sweet re: Gates/police was a set-up by Obama so that he could furthur his agenda re: racial inequality which Severin says is what the Obam a Presidency is all about. ( Guess Obama meets with foreign leaders just to throw people off) .Braude informed him that reliable sources including Sweet herself denied that anyone had any knowledge of the asked question beforehand.
I didn’t listen furthur, but wonder how Jay got out of that one. I am sure he. He’s a pro at making honest reporting seem beneath him.
Excellent post. I may comment on the Limbaugh side of things on my post. I’ll credit you with bringing it to my attention.
lynnrockets.com
Have you read any of the bill? I have and iti s everybit as scarry as they make it. read read read
Hi, Dorothy. Exactly which parts of the bill do you find scary? (Or did you really mean scarry? It is a health care bill, after all. Maybe you were talking about surgery.)