The asymmetrical mythology battlefield

In response to Re: Editing History:

One of the big disadvantages conservatives face is that we still don’t get to conduct that kind of “prosecution,” even when we’ve got the facts on our side.  We’ve made huge strides in the realm of influencing media narrative, since the Rathergate days… but sometimes I think the mainstream media has been working to inoculate itself against further Rathergates, with some success.  The Left can push a phony story faster and further than the Right can push a true one.

Of the many data points that emerged following the 2012 election, one of the things I found most striking was the remarkably small penetration of the “you didn’t build that” and “the private sector is doing fine” Obama gaffes into general public awareness.  The amount of MSM coverage provided to these controversies was vanishingly small, even though we on the Right saw them as major stories.  Low-information voters who could recite Romney’s “gaffes” off the top of their heads – usually without much fidelity to whatever he actually said – never heard of Obama’s.  It’s not that they fell for liberal spinning of “you didn’t build that”; they never heard it at all.  The battlefield of political mythology is still decidedly asymmetrical.