Sarah Palin's 'Death Panels' "Lie of the Year"

No surprise, one of Sarah Palin's many lies and disingenuous remarks has been chosen as "Lie of the Year." Since Sarah Palin has written a book full of ridiculous assertions, unsubstantiated "facts," dubious claims, no references, and wrongly attributed quotes (to be fair, what do you expect from a person with a ghost writer, an entire staff to proofread and fact check, and the power of a prominent publishing house to proofread and fact-check a 400-page book written in four months?), it isn't difficult to believe that she has also garnered the "Lie Of The Year." When she wouldn't stop telling the lie that she never supported the "Bridge To Nowhere" during her vice-presidential run in 2008, it wasn't a huge leap of faith to believe that she would stoop to lying to the public again if she felt the need. And during the health care reform debate, she felt the need. She invented something that did not exist and told the unwitting that it was so. And with her invention of the "death panels," Sarah Palin walked away the winner of the "Lie of the Year," awarded her by the St. Petersburg Times, home of Politifact, which won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for journalism for its work in political fact-checking.

The "Lie of the Year" comes right after "Visorgate," where Sarah Palin cut short her recent trip to Hawaii because, according to her, the press hounded her and her family and annoyed other vacationers so much that they felt they had to leave. And all over the blacking out of John McCain's name on a sun visor. Palin swears that it wasn't a political statement, that she was attempting to go "incognito" in Hawaii by blacking out McCain's name and, therefore, drawing less attention to herself. The fact that any old baseball cap or tourist-trap sun visor would have worked better at the "incognito" part never occurred to her? Either she's lying about trying to remain incognito or she's lying about not making some sort of political statement by blacking out her 2008 running mate's name.

But the "Lie of the Year"? Politifact said that Sarah Palin's "death panels" statement was chosen as the biggest lie of the year by a readers poll, garnering over 60% of the vote (in a state where 17.4% of the population would make up people being judged by those "death panels"). Other lies included some told by President Obama and other politicians, like Joe Wilson, whose worst lie was yelling, "You lie!" at the president during the State of the Union Address. But nobody's lies were considered as big as Sarah Palin's "death panels" lie told to torpedo the nascent health care reform legislation that was at the time being written and debated in Congress.

At the time Sarah Palin made her statement, there were various pieces of health care reform legislation being considered. It is believed that Sarah Palin's "death panels" referred to a provision in one measure which allowed for the voluntary counseling for end-of-life planning for senior citizens. The gross exaggeration of a service that would be provided for seniors to help them with regard to living wills, non-resuscitation orders, and such seems to have come from the exaggerated hysterics of former New York lieutenant governor Betsy McCaughey, who made claims that alluded to the creation of panels of doctors that would be able to approve and deny health care.

Sarah Palin's lie, which was posted on her Facebook account on August 7, 2009: Seniors and the disabled "will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care."

In her own defense, Sarah Palin told The National Review last month that her words shouldn't be taken literally. She said the "death panels" statement was "a lot like when President Reagan used to refer to the Soviet Union was the evil empire. He got his point across. He got people thinking and researching what he was talking about. It was quite effective. Same thing with death panels, I would characterize them like that again in a heartbeat."

And therein Sarah Palin covers the "Lie of the Year" with another. Ronald Reagan's depiction of the Soviet Union as the evil empire was an abstract reference to a political state. Sarah Palin's "death panels" was a concrete reference to a misleading extrapolation.

Sarah Palin was correct about one thing: Reagan's label was effective. So was Sarah Palin's. And both operated from the vantage of ignorance, one of a political entity, the other of a piece of legislation. But whereas the U.S.S.R. actually existed and had been considered a threat for decades, the "death panels" were a figment of Sarah Palin's imagination and not a threat -- except to health care reform. And then there is the line about "people thinking and researching," which may have been true with regard to the Soviet Union, but not with regard to the "death panels," because just a little research would have been enough to assure the reader that nothing of the kind existed in printed form anywhere (as Jon Stewart pointed out so effortlessly to Betsy McCaughey on "The Daily Show").

Adolf Hitler coined the use of the Big Lie technique in Mein Kampf. It is not known if Sarah Palin has read or is even familiar with Mein Kampf, but one thing is certain: she certainly understands the power of the Big Lie technique to sway the masses -- because, as Hitler wrote, it is inconceivable that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously."

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Sources:

St. Petersburg Times
Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler
The National Review
"The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," Comedy Central Network
Census.gov