strawmen in the phosperous

One way to mislead useing the media is to get an outlet to post what someone said without giving any sense of what is meant by it.  This is not as simple as it sounds.  There has to be some built in alternative meaning that can be looked at as a possible cause.  "While one would think that he would say X, he actually said Y."  The differences can be worth highlighting if they are genuine and weighty; or disruptive and deflating when the result of irony.

Take this headline:  Numbers don't lie

This is a quote from the Whitehouse spokesman, Tony Snow, who when asked to comment on the latest casuality milestone, (which apparently assessed as such based on how evenly it is divisible by 1000), replied with a guarded answer of, "The numbers don't lie",  which is a presumably tacit nod to the realities the administration has been trying to get everyone to ignore in the hope of keeping our earnest support - as opposed to our frightened, between a rock and a hard place support.  The commentator, (or commentators, as the case may be - it was written by the editorial "staff", so no telling who actually wrote it), attempts to make the case that this was the perspective of some aloof loungechair general who simply sits back and orders more tanks on the shopping channel and puts and add on craigslist for troops.  Every sort of numbers and statistics are bullet pointed to make the clear and tounge in cheek argument that the speaker is not only heartless, but incompetent.

What does this acheive?  It makes us question the integrity of the man and the people running the institution for which he speaks.  Does it make any insights into the issue at hand.  Perhaps.  Perhaps someone who reads it will become aware of some fact about the war or its aftermath that changes their mind about it.  But this could have been acheived in a number of ways.  Why would such a discovery more likely take place in this context?  Is it perhaps because the person reading it happen is drawn to what seems like a meaningful attacks on an enemy, and is rewarded with knowledge and a bit of righteousness.