{"id":20247,"date":"2013-05-14T09:27:24","date_gmt":"2013-05-14T14:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=20247"},"modified":"2013-05-14T09:27:24","modified_gmt":"2013-05-14T14:27:24","slug":"qotd-litmus-testing-political-scandals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/05\/14\/qotd-litmus-testing-political-scandals\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Litmus testing political scandals"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Dear friends in the media.<\/p>\n<p>Come on.<\/p>\n<p>I mean, <em>come<\/em> on.<\/p>\n<p>You and I know what\u2019s going with the Benghazi thing. Let me share something that I first put into play during the \u201cwas Anthony Weiner\u2019s Twitter account hacked\u201d debate, but that comes from watching the Lewinsky scandal, the where-did\u2013Mark-Sanford-go scandal, the why-is-David-Wu-dressed-in-a-tiger-suit scandal, and a wide variety of wrongdoing committed by politicians:<\/p>\n<p><em>When there is evidence of scandalous or bizarre behavior on the part of a political figure, and no reasonable explanation is revealed within 24 to 48 hours, then the truth is probably as bad as everyone suspects.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Nobody withholds exculpatory information. Nobody who\u2019s been accused of something wrong waits for \u201cjust the right moment\u201d to unveil information that proves the charge baseless. Political figures never choose to deliberately let themselves twist in the wind. It\u2019s not the instinctive psychological reaction to being falsely accused, it\u2019s not what any public communications professional would recommend, and to use one of our president\u2019s favorite justifications, it\u2019s just common sense.<\/p>\n<p>Jim Geraghty, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/campaign-spot\/348230\/mask-ripped-hope-and-change\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;The Mask Is Ripped Off of &#8216;Hope and Change'&#8221;, <em>National Review<\/em><\/a>, 2013-05-14<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear friends in the media. Come on. I mean, come on. You and I know what\u2019s going with the Benghazi thing. Let me share something that I first put into play during the \u201cwas Anthony Weiner\u2019s Twitter account hacked\u201d debate, but that comes from watching the Lewinsky scandal, the where-did\u2013Mark-Sanford-go scandal, the why-is-David-Wu-dressed-in-a-tiger-suit scandal, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,53,41],"tags":[213,51,413,101],"class_list":["post-20247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-newspapers","tag-pr","tag-scandal","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5gz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20248,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20247\/revisions\/20248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}