They lie because they get away with it

On Monday, we honored the million men who died defending our great nation and protecting our God-given rights. Sadly, the current resident in the White House decided to honor instead a drug addict and armed robber who died in police custody. His staff perpetuated the lie that George Floyd was murdered by a policeman — a lie upheld by a kangaroo court in Minnesota.

That’s the power of the Big Lie.

The death of Morgan Spurlock showed why people in the media lie. They get away with it and it pays well. He made a movie for $65,000 called Super Size Me and collected a hefty share of its $22 million gross at the box office.

The premise was he ate nothing but McDonald’s food for 30 days and it ruined his health. The food did not. He died of cancer not obesity. His liver likely was in bad shape but it wasn’t from milkshakes and Big Macs. It was from 40 years of drinking, going back to when he was 13.

Nevertheless, the media sold the lie for 20 years, and continued the lie in his obituaries, although a few outlets included a paragraph or two buried in the story that put his lie in perspective.

The Daily Mail shouted in a headline, “Horrifying effects of eating McDonald's for a month on Morgan Spurlock's body revealed — including 'turning his liver to paté.'“

That was a lie.

NBC summed up the legend of Mister Spurlock pretty well:

Super Size Me was by far his best-known creative venture and claim to fame. In the movie, he recorded the month of his life when he ate nothing but burgers, fries and other quick-fix staples from McDonald's — an experiment that he claimed took a toll on his mental and physical health.

The documentary helped boost public consciousness about the nutritional content of fast food and America's obesity epidemic, inspiring a backlash against McDonald's and other big-name restaurant chains. Super Size Me was nominated for best documentary feature at the 77th Academy Awards in 2005.

Super Size Me provoked a national debate and grossed more than $22 million on a modest $65,000 budget. But it came under the microscope over the accuracy of some of its claims about health and science. Spurlock's disclosure in 2017 that he was drinking heavily through much of his life put his purported symptoms in a new light.

The media heavily promoted him and his movie when it debuted 20 years ago. Overnight, journalists became instant dietitians — just like they became instant virologists 4 years ago when covid 19 arrived from Wuhan.

NBC was among the cheerleaders: “Award-winning filmmaker Morgan Spurlock eats McDonald's for a month— and gets sick. What does McDonald's have to say about the experiment-turned-film? Deborah Norville Tonight interviews Spurlock, and McDonald's global nutritionist Cathy Kapica.”

They should have known better.

Via Instapundit, James K. Glassman called the fellow out before the movie’s premiere in 2004, in a piece called, “A Big Con Man.” Glassman wrote:

Super Size Me is not a serious look at a real health problem. It is, instead, an outrageously dishonest and dangerous piece of self-promotion. Through his antics, Spurlock sends precisely the wrong message. He absolves us of responsibility for our own fitness. We aren't to blame for being fat; big corporations are! And the remedy, he suggests, is to file lawsuits and plead with the Nanny State and the Food Police for protection.

While the film demonizes McDonald's and other restaurants, Spurlock's weight gain and health decline have nothing to do with where he ate (after all, Robert DeNiro gained 60 pounds for his role in Raging Bull by dining at great restaurants in Italy), but rather with how much he consumed and how little he exercised (Spurlock even cut down on normal walking).

The media ignored Glassman when the movie came out for the exact reason Glassman stated. The lie shifted the blame for being fat to Big Corporations.

The Big Lie works because it sells the myth people want to believe. Conservatives talk a great deal about personal responsibility but really few people want to take responsibility for their situation.

Hillary is a good example of this. She ran against a rookie candidate in 2016, whom the media demonized. She had a then-record billion dollars to blow on the campaign. At one point she asked, why aren’t I 50 points ahead?

The answer is that she rhymes with witch.

After Trump humiliated her, as she drowned her sorrow in Chardonnay, she concocted a conspiracy theory that Putin stole the election for Trump. She’s nuts. But her Putin-ate-my-election lie worked. Even after an intensive investigation by Bobby Mueller that resulted in no indictments related to Russian interference, the press continued to push this wild-eyed lie.

Time magazine said on April 18, 2019:

When Russia set out to interfere with the 2016 election, it went all out.

Over the course of the election, a wide-ranging group of Russians probed state voter databases for insecurities; hacked the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic National Committee; tried to hack the campaign of Sen. Marco Rubio and the Republican National Committee; released politically damaging information on the internet; spread propaganda on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram; staged rallies in Florida and Pennsylvania; set up meetings with members of the Trump campaign and its associates; and floated a business proposition for a skyscraper in Moscow to the Trump Organization.

The goal, as determined by the U.S. intelligence community and backed up by evidence gathered by Special Counsel Robert Mueller: To damage the Clinton campaign, boost Trump’s chances and sow distrust in American democracy overall.

Again, Mueller found nothing.

In a sane world, a president could sue for such libel. But under the ridiculous NYT v. Sullivan ruling, a president cannot sue. The press knows it has a license to lie and uses it like a teenage girl with her daddy’s credit card. The more outrageous the lie, the more the press promotes it.

The press promoted cloth masks but cloth masks do not stop a virus.

The press promoted social distancing but it does not stop a virus.

The press dismissed ivermectin as horse paste but it worked against covid 19.

The press demanded mandatory shots but Pfizer’s shot is not a vaccine.

In each case the press accepted the government’s lies instead of the truth. The idea that the press can hold anyone accountable is as nonsensical as saying a 5-year-old can pick his sex. Come to think of it, the press believes that too.

I do not mean to pick on Morgan Spurlock. Our thoughts and prayers should be with his friends and family, but he illustrates and super-sizes the problem with lies: they work.