Political Hyperbole

I’ve seen several people linking to this article about Rick Santorum, an article titled “Santorum: ‘I’ll Die’ to Stop Same Sex Marriages.” The links have sometimes included comments about the messed-up priorities of a man who would sooner die than permit a loving, same-sex couple the same kind of rights he enjoys as a straight man.

There’s a problem. What Santorum actually said was:

“The battle we’re engaged in right now is same sex marriage, ultimately that is the very foundation of our country, the family, what the family structure is going to look like. I’ll die on that hill.”

You see that last bit? “I’ll die on that hill.” That’s what we call a figure of speech.

I wrote on Friday that I was going to write the crap out of a chapter. I was not, in fact, using my keyboard to extract literal feces from my document. I was using a figure of speech to more colorfully describe my efforts to improve the story.

Look, I find a lot of Santorum’s views and statements to be despicable. But my feelings are based on what he’s said and done, not on twisting his words into something he didn’t say.

I don’t care where you fall on the political spectrum. When you distort (or outright lie about) what someone said in order to try to score points, you lose credibility.

This has been Jim’s cranky political post of the day. Thank you for listening, and enjoy the rest of your weekend.