Have been wondering about fact-checking operations, which claim to have the strict facts when it’s often a matter of argument threads, as opposed to spelling a name or getting a date right — except, of course, when there’s argument about a name or a date. 

Hence, I much support this from Red Statesman Erick E. in piece about Rep. Todd Akin’s rape comments.  (And is E.E. sure about spelling of his first name?) 

Erick (sp?):

Politifact disagrees with the statement about Obama and infanticide, but as is often the case, Politifact is obfuscating what Barack Obama said to help a Democrat. Politifact is, after all, the Walter Duranty of fact checkers complete with a Pulitzer Prize.

Oh, and would Sun-Timeswoman Lynn Sweet, recommender of Politifact, take note?  Thank you, Lynn.  And Lynn, please broaden your list of resources.  Better recommend rabid promoters pro and con any position, keeping in mind Norman Mailer’s comment to Chicago 7 judge Julius Hoffman many years ago, “But Your Honor, facts without nuance are nothing.”  

Another point, Hegel, and Plato long before him, had it right about dialectics.  It’s a jungle out there, full of charges and counter-charges.  You have to be good at sifting things.  These fact-checkers claim a lot for themselves but sometimes offer a cookbook approach, comforting to some, indeed a naive approach. 

What we have here is a problem of communication, true, but more specifically one of epistemology. 

Think about it.