Language Control

The word “Debunking” isn’t unique to the blogosphere. But the blogosphere has, apparently, changed its definition.

In pre-blog days, Debunking meant using facts to prove that something wasn’t true.

In the leftosphere, Debunking means that the premise is true, but we want you to ignore it so here is a bunch of shit to look at.

Case in point: Michelle Bachman (R-MN) asserted that census data was used to round up and intern Americans of Japanese descent by the Roosevelt Administration during WWII, and that that was one of the reasons she wasn’t going to volunteer any more information than is legally required on her family’s census form.

Reasonable.

The CrooksAndLiars blog, as just one of the leftosphere logs who thinks this is stupid, stated

Michelle Bachmann once again proves to America that she’s downright insane. TPM and Think Progress have more debunking Bachmann’s fear mongering.

Now, if you follow those two links, you’ll find no debunking. Everything Bachman stated was and is one of those pesky facts.

What you will find at those links are other facts that have nothing to do whatsoever with Bachman’s assertion: Your telephone number is not something you are required by law to put on the form, that race has been a question on census form since 1790, that it is a felony on the federal level for a census worker to divulge your information to anyone not involved in the administration of the census, that the internment of Americans of Japanese descent was a long time ago.

However, no actual debunking has taken place.

Heather at C&L blog is hoping her readers are lazy and will go forth and spread the word that Bachman has been debunked without actually finding that, well, Bachman was spot on and that giving the duty of promotion of and recruitment for the census to a group as hateful and partisan as ACORN is a very bad idea.