Romney had an ad mentioning how unemployment at the end of his tenure as governor of Massachusetts was 4.7%, and Politifact, the fact-checking site, looked into it, found that the unemployment was 4.7% when Romney left office, so it rated the statement… “Half True.”
Since a lot of us are a bit tired of these editorialists trying to disguise themselves as objective fact-checkers, we had some fun on Twitter coming up with other Politifact ratings. Here were the ones I came up with:
POLITIFACT RATINGS:
Can’t say “true” because that would just encourage them.
Tralse
Shut up, wingnut, and take your “objective facts” with you!
Completely and utterly false, but he meant well so “Half True”
Can’t quite say “true” because then we’d be agreeing with — you know — those people.
False, because it goes against “Obama winning reelection” which we rated as “True”.
True but not correct.
False, because we decided this truth doesn’t matter.
False, because if we said otherwise we might lose a party invite.
Yeah, all the facts line up, but I just can’t quite say “True” for some reason and I have to go with my gut.
True, but that’s not what your mom said last night.
False, because you can’t handle the truth.
Somewhere between “true but false” and “false but true”.
Isn’t not the opposite of untrue.
Falseish.
True but with an explanation.
If he weighs the same as a duck, then true.
True only in an alternate universe where the media is conservative.
No fair using facts, repug.
“What is truth?”
Your facts interfere with my agenda.
true enough to tell your wife.
I wouldn’t publish that.
It has elements of truth, and, while we haven’t noticed any falsities, we can’t verify that the elements of truth are presented in the correct order.
It depends on what the meaning of the word “true” is.
This might have been considered true at one point, but he has obviously told so many other lies that this truth is now tainted and should now be considered mostly weaselly.
Technically all the words are true, but the intent is misleading since he is obviously attempting to persuade us that he would be a better president than Obama. Since we all know he wouldn’t be, there’s no way we could in good conscience label this as completely true.
Truth is relative, right?
We would not stake our reputation on that being true.
Why do you care whether it’s true or not anyway? Did he kill Bin Laden?
It’s true but not with a capital “t”.
This issue is not important. Forward!
I reject your reality and substitute my own
Prepostchronological, possessive self-substitutional, norm-adjustive objective-paradigm-rejective, proantequivocational flexible absolutist, antinonpromendacious veracitizing.
All claims about effects on the economy are Half True on PolitiFact because no one person controls the whole economy. Yet.
It’s fascinating to see that the distortion is rarely on the facts themselves but on the summary. Somewhere in the conversion from facts to politifacts things go askew.
Splunge!
Politifact is a mass of conflicting impulses.