Can't understand the haircut? It's Maude Frickert!

I'm seeing Scott Adams assert "I can't get past the haircut."

He's looking at this:

🔥BREAKING: Media Matters is on the brink of collapse.

After two decades of smearing conservatives, the Soros-funded attack dog is under siege—from lawsuits by @elonmusk, FTC probes, & state AG investigations. Why? Donor fraud, defamation, & LYING to destroy Twitter.

Thread🧵 pic.twitter.com/LfYzbt7Rsb

— Rod D. Martin (@RodDMartin) July 30, 2025

I'm seeing Maude Frickert:

Sorry about the sexism! I just wanted you to see the wig Jonathan Winters wore back in the 1960s.

"With Republicans in control of the House of Representatives, a loose network of groups allied with Democrats is planning a multimillion-dollar counteroffensive..."

"...  against an expected onslaught of oversight investigations into President Biden, his family and his administration," The NYT reports. 

David Brock, the Democratic activist behind Facts First, said his group “intends to work with the White House where appropriate but will make our own judgments.”... People involved in that initiative... have previously worked with Mr. Brock’s team and have close connections to the White House and the Democratic Party....

The battles could be turbocharged by new outside groups like Facts First, which is funded by “dark money” from donors whose identities can be kept secret.

Can't be allowed?!

"Bernie Sanders' fans can't be allowed to poison another Democratic primary with personal attacks" — writes David Brock (at NBC News) with ludicrous disregard for the freedom of speech. And is Bernie's participation in the 2016 primaries to be characterized as personal attacks?

I'm hardly the only political observer who blames Hillary Clinton's general election defeat to Donald Trump in part on personal attacks on Clinton first made by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and his backers. Those attacks from her left laid the groundwork for copycat attacks lobbed by Donald Trump....

Donald Trump, copycat?

The "personal attacks" Brock cites are — she got " $15 million from Wall Street through [her] super PAC," it was a problem her husband to be heading a foundation collecting money from foreign governments when she was Secretary of State, and she used the term "superpredators" and "everybody knew it was a racist term."

Much of this column is about protecting the image of Beto O'Rourke:

The real problem for Sanders' supporters seems to be that this "Kennedyesque golden boy," as one has derided O'Rourke, seems perfectly poised to steal Sanders' thunder among millennials and white liberals with his fresh energy and personal charisma....

We've seen this movie before: Sanders' assault on Clinton's progressive credentials were pernicious in large part because they were not about policy disputes at all, but rather intended to falsely impugn Hillary's character and integrity.

Falsely? What was false in Bernie's attacks on Hillary? I don't think Bernie gave Trump material that Trump wouldn't have found for himself.

Here's the post where I reject the term "false equivalence."

First, is it "equivalence" or "equivalency"? The Ngram says "equivalence":



The 2 words are equivalent, and neither is wrong. I'm just noticing that there are 2 words and interested in picking one and being consistent. It's not a word I've used much in the 12-year history of this blog. It appears almost only in quotes and almost always when someone is saying "false equivalenc[e/y]" (or "moral equivalenc[e/y]").

It occurs to me that "false equivalence" is a bad expression. What's "false" about thinking 2 things are alike? You might falsely claim that 2 things are identical, but if you are just putting 2 things side by side and saying they are similar when there are also differences, you don't deserve to be accused of falsehood. Maybe "equivalence" is the wrong word. If you haven't said the 2 things are exactly equal, you don't deserve to be said to have asserted that there is "equivalence." To concentrate on the word "false" in the phrase "false equivalence" is to get distracted, perhaps by taking offense at the pejorative.

I'm drawn into this language issue by an off-line discussion of the alleged sexual misdeeds of Donald Trump and Bill Clinton. In case you are wondering.

Anyway, looking at my own archive, I don't think I've ever accused anyone of relying on "false equivalence," but I have discussed the usage. For example, in June 2014, David Brock was trying to convince rich liberals to spend big money on politics even as he was lambasting the Koch Brothers (nonliberals) for spending big money on politics:

“You’re not in this room today trying to figure out how to rig the game so you can be free to make money poisoning little kids, and neither am I... Subscribing to a false moral equivalence is giving the Kochs exactly what they want: keeping us quiet about what they’re doing to destroy the very fabric of our nation."

And I said: 

His idea is: Since the Democrats are in politics to do what is good and the Kochs want what is bad, there's a "false equivalence." Seeing the false equivalence — I observe — requires that you look at the end and not the means.

The phrase "false equivalence" is very common rhetoric these days. Watch out for it. I think it's being used to inhibit comparisons. But there is nothing wrong — nothing false — about comparisons. You just need to be perceptive and honest about how much alike things are. Those who say "false equivalence" are really saying they'd prefer to call attention to the differences or for you to just not bother them with a comparison that makes them uncomfortable.

One last thing. There are different reasons to resist someone's saying 2 things are alike. There's the familiar political argument. X criticizes Y's candidate, Y says X's candidate did the same kind of thing, X wants to get back to the problem with Y's candidate, and the phrase "false equivalence" seems like the tool for the job.

But quite apart from politics, there are different psychological orientations. I'm thinking of lumpers and splitters:

A "lumper" is an individual who takes a gestalt view of a definition, and assigns examples broadly, assuming that differences are not as important as signature similarities. A "splitter" is an individual who takes precise definitions, and creates new categories to classify samples that differ in key ways.

Some people see similarities much more than differences, and for other people differences predominate. I tend to see the ways we're all alike, but there are other people who look for ways to segment us off into little groups. I think I'm more of a lumper but to say that is to be something of a splitter, no? Those other people are splitters. It makes no sense. Or, yes, I see how it does, I need to see how it does. I don't think there are lumpers and splitters. That's too splitter-y for me. I think we're much more alike than different, but if you think we are more different, that's okay too, as long as you don't accuse me of falsehood for saying that we are more alike.

Maureen Dowd snaps at Hillary to "Call Off the Dogs."

"Hillary’s inability to dispense with brass-knuckle, fanatical acolytes like Brock shows that she still has an insecure streak that requires Borgia-like blind loyalty, and can’t distinguish between the real vast right-wing conspiracy and the voices of legitimate concern."

Worth the click even if only to laugh at the photograph of David Brock. 

"If you care about your party and our country, you just do what you are asked.... If you care about yourself, you take your toys and go home."

What Jim Messina, co-chair of the pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA Action, said to David Brock, quoted in a NYT piece titled "Emerging Hillary Clinton Team Shows Signs of Disquiet."

The Democrats are big hypocrites about "dark money" in politics.

According to Thomas B. Edsall (in the NYT).

He has this horrifying quote from Media Matters chairman, David Brock, speaking to a Democracy Alliance group:

You’re not in this room today trying to figure out how to rig the game so you can be free to make money poisoning little kids. Subscribing to a false moral equivalence is giving the Kochs exactly what they want: keeping us quiet about what they’re doing to destroy the very fabric of our nation.

That's one of the many, many ways of saying the end justifies the means.

"David Brock has a message for liberal millionaires: Don’t sweat being called hypocrites."

"Brock, a former 'right-wing hit-man'-turned-top-big-money-Democratic-operative, is part of a behind-the-scenes campaign to convince donors it’s OK to attack the Koch brothers for spending millions of dollars while doing the exact same thing for the left."

Presumably, Brock makes money saying stuff like this. Koch Brocking.

His idea is: Since the Democrats are in politics to do what is good and the Kochs want what is bad, there's a "false equivalence." Seeing the false equivalence — I observe — requires that you look at the end and not the means.

And, of course, you have to believe that your end is good and theirs is bad... or at least you have to be willing to portray your end as good, which is making the ostensible end only a means. And that's common in politics where the true end is often power, control, and perpetuation of one's own job. Seeming ends like immigration reform or marriage equality can easily be means to those ends.

In any case, let me congratulate Brock for getting these speaking gigs and for the hair. That's political hair par excellence. That's beyond Teddy Kennedy hair. That's outright Bob La Follette hair.

"I've found the perfect woman. Gorgeous, sexy and like a bit of crazy."

Texted Anthony Weiner to Sydney Leathers. I imagine that about what Bill Clinton might have thought about Monica Lewinsky. Oh, these men who marry excellent wives and then find there's not enough sex and — more perversely — none of the old crazy.

That made me think about the old political phrase "a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty." It was an attack, not a description of the perfect woman. Here's David Brock explaining the phrase:

If [Clarence] Thomas was completely innocent, Anita Hill would have had to be insane to go on national television and tell a lie under oath. Grasping for an explanation of the inexplicable, doing everything I could to ruin Hill's credibility, I took a scattershot approach, dumping virtually every derogatory—and often contradictory—allegation I had collected on Hill from the Thomas camp into the mix.... She was, in my words, "a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty."...

Some conservative friends... did warn me quietly that the "little bit nutty and a little bit slutty" line, a reference to the classic nuts-and-sluts defense in sexual harassment cases, was in poor taste, or at least politically foolish, in that it handed my critics a club with which to beat me. The phrase certainly stuck, and it would be unearthed and brandished in my face in all future controversies over my work... I had fallen in with radicals of the Gingrich-Limbaugh stripe. After all, how far was the "nutty/slutty" line from Newt's rants about the "grotesque" and "sick" Democrats, or Limbaugh's slurs on blacks and women?

What works as an attack on a woman's fitness for public life is also a description of the perfect woman.

My Imaginary Reader gasps and splutters out: Different times, different parties, different purposes.

Have I made you uncomfortable enough to call me crazy?

"What happened after the Obama election, I think, is that Fox morphed into something that isn’t even recognizable as a form of media."

"It looks more like a political committee than what it looked like pre-Obama, which was essentially talk radio on television. It’s more dangerous now; it’s more lethal. And so as Fox has doubled down, we’ve doubled down."

We  = David Brock and his Foxophobic enterprise Media Matters for America.

Brock has used his buck-raking ability to turn Media Matters into a political force. What began in 2004 as a ten-person shop with a $3 million annual budget now has around 90 employees and plans to spend $15 million this year. In a fancy office building on Massachusetts Avenue, the organization’s researchers work in six-hour monitoring shifts, from five in the morning till one at night, watching Fox or listening to talk radio in the hope that Rush or Sean or some other conservative yakker will step in it. They’re seldom disappointed. “I knew that as soon as you started shining a light on these people,” Brock says, “there was enough outrageous and despicable and offensive and false commentary that you could make a splash.”

I appreciate their work! Keep clipping those clips and serving them up. As you monitor FoxNews and Limbaugh, I'll monitor you and whatever the hell you've morphed into. To me, it's all recognizable as media. And I'm always looking for juicy bits to chew on.

Part of Media Matters’ strength is its staff’s almost unfathomable endurance. “People who work here have to have a personality that enjoys getting angry watching Fox for six hours every day but then being patient enough to want to fact-check every second of it,” explains Ari Rabin-Havt, Media Matters’ executive vice-president. 

Ha. I love the way New York Magazine, writing this lengthy piece, goes to the Media Matters executives. I'd like to hear from those employees who do the detail work, "getting angry" for the rich execs. They're supposed to be all about truth and anger and for the left...  always for the left. How does that feel, as you comb through all those video files, looking for trouble truth — but only one perspective of the truth — and cull the clips that make the truth that your bosses want to tell as truthy as possible? Are you angry enough all the time, angry in the right way, angry about truth as you do the bidding of guys who are raking in money to get at the people you're paid to hate for them? What are you paid?

The group demands accuracy from those staffers. Last year, according to Rabin-Havt, Media Matters produced 20,000 pieces of content and issued only 24 corrections. “There’s the expectation that you can’t get something wrong,” he says. “There are consequences for mistakes. One person was fired for an error last year.”

Oh! How ineffably virtuous of you! Get to work, staffers! Stay angry, stay truthy, cut clips that stoke hatred of the right, but don't cut them to the point where we have to issue a correction, or we will cut you.

(Hey, that guy who got cut should write an exposé of what goes on inside Media Matters.)