The Truth is What You Make of It, I Suppose

The liberal left has been spending a great deal of time lately trying to make political hay out of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in the recent Indian Ocean tsunami. The latest effort, led by my bete noire John Aravosis over at Americablog, is to use a cursory survey of "religious right" websites and, based on that, claim that the "religious right is ignoring tsunami relief", and the left is not.

The problem is, though, that Aravosis, either through inadvertent or deliberate ignorance of the situation, is comparing political advocacy groups to "left" religious organizations and church denominations. When one compares denominations and religious organizations such as the Southern Baptist Convention and Salvation Army, as MediaSoul showed, the difference vanishes. Lending credence to the theory is that Aravosis is deliberately ignoring data that doesn't fit his desired conclusion, inexplicably Aravosis links to Pat Robertson's personal page to "prove" his point, but ignores Robertson's ministry page -- perhaps because, as a look at Robertson's ministry page shows, he definitely is NOT ignoring the situation.

This type of selective editing is not new territory for Aravosis -- witness his hissy fit and supporting the UN bureaucrats bashing Bush over not returning to DC immediately after the disaster while completely ignoring the fact that the bureaucrats' boss, Kofi Annan, didn't let the tsunami interfere with his ski vacation. However, it does make one wonder -- despite his statement that "a great nation deserves the truth", why does he only give half of it?