The Nigh Seen Creeder

An old adage tells us that a lie told often enough eventually becomes truth.  Unfortunately, a great many left-wing canards and outright fibs, i.e., budget deficits lead to increased interest rates, gun-control measures reduce crime, the Constitution mandates a "wall of separation" between church and state, etc., have been repeated with such frequency that vast numbers of the citizenry have bought into them.

The April 13, 2007, Entertainment Weekly - which I thumbed through in my doctor's office last week - gleefully prints two leftist-inspired untruths, if you will, that, unfortunately, have a lot of traction in mainstream circles 'cause said untruths have been repeated so very often with nary an opposing opinion in sight, not to mention in print. To wit:

First, in an essay 'bout 1980s teen-sex comedies, EW's Chris Nashawaty says this:
 
"There was ... a president who could barely bring himself to mention the word AIDS, much less make it a national priority."

Anyone who suggests that President Ronald Reagan did nothing to combat AIDS is guilty of propagating a myth of epic proportion. The first case of AIDS was diagnosed in 1981; and it took a couple of years for the medical community to discern how widespread - and God-awful - the new disease was. That said, the Reagan Administration spent $6 billion on AIDS research -- more than on any other disease. (Repeat: the Reagan Administration spent $6 billion on AIDS research -- more than on any other disease.)

Second, EW's Owen Gleiberman tells us that Sacco and Vanzetti were "executed for a murder they almost surely didn't commit." I'll let National Review's Jonah Goldberg take it from here:

"I'd forgotten about [the Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent] declaration until I read in the Los Angeles Times a fascinating story about how the father of journalistic muckraking, Upton Sinclair, not only knew that Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were guilty but withheld his information for the good of the 'movement,' for his personal safety and his professional success. Sacco and Vanzetti, if you recall, were Italian anarchists sentenced to death for the 1920 murders of a paymaster and his guard in Braintree, Mass.

Sinclair, the Pulitzer Prize-winning crusader who penned the famous novel The Jungle, prompting Teddy Roosevelt to coin the term 'muckraker,' had, quite simply, lied. But before he lied, he was a true believer. He'd gone to Massachusetts to research his book Boston, which was set against the backdrop of the trial — the trial, that is, of two supposedly innocent men. Unfortunately for Sinclair, Sacco and Vanzetti's lawyer told him the unvarnished truth: The pair were just plain guilty, and their alibis were a pack of lies.

"'I faced the most difficult ethical problem of my life,' Sinclair wrote to his attorney. 'I had come to Boston with the announcement that I was going to write the truth about the case.' But the truth would cost him too many readers. 'It is much better copy as a naive defense of Sacco and Vanzetti because this is what all my foreign readers expect, and they are 90% of my public.'

"That Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty is no surprise to those who've looked into the case (though some die-hards claim Vanzetti was merely a co-conspirator after the fact). But that didn't stop the martyrdom campaign. Their execution was used to galvanize everyone from establishment liberals to the very, very hard left. Josef Stalin publicly lamented it. Protests erupted in the capitals of Europe and across the U.S. A young Felix Frankfurter staked his reputation on their innocence. Sacco and Vanzetti became props in a passion play about the evils of the U.S. in the 1920s, and the myth endured."

'Nough said ...