The way that propaganda works is that once people develop a certain perception of something, it is very hard to disabuse people of that opinion. A case in point has played out over the primaries this season with Hillary Clinton. The general belief by many is that Hillary Clinton is a manipulative, cynical veteran of politics who is interested in her own power. Depending on what side of the political spectrum you fall on this perception, while based in many good bits of evidence, it’s seemingly exaggerated when you compare Clinton to virtually every single liberal moderate politician in America. Bernie and Hillary voted on the same things 93 percent of the time. We don’t need to have a pie fight about that. That’s a fact. Once again, I’ll note that I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary and that too is a fact. Jimmy Kimmel Live took on that perception in a piece that they occasionally do called “Lie Witness News.” The premise is that they ask people about something in the news, in this case the recent release of more (mostly) unremarkable personal email server emails from Clinton. The humor comes in that they ask people, while leading those people with more and more outrageous “facts” about what was revealed in the news.
Some of the jokes are cute:
Can you believe how many Nigerian Princes she responded to?
To considerably more sinister:
What did you think about the fact that she accepted Osama Bin Laden’s LinkdIn request?
In every case, the people being interviewed lie by saying they heard, or read or know, about these “facts.” In every case, they say things like “it doesn’t surprise me,” and “I can believe it.” The point in the end is that whether or not Hillary Clinton has done anything wrong, or the degree to which she has done things wrong, matters not at all to someone who is ready to apply this general brush of corruption and ill intent on her.
It’s also funny.