<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 There were some great congratulations in media circles over how swiftly the elite political press \u2014 and even some scurvy bloggish types \u2014 jumped all up in the grill of the zombie-eyed granny-starver Paul Ryan in his in his attempt on Wednesday night to surpass the current world land-speed record for Lies Told. Comes now, the backlash to the backlash. The conservative press started early, arguing that it all depends on what the word &amp;quot;closed&amp;quot; means, and essentially arguing that the president should have obeyed all of those free-market principles and intervened directly to keep the plant open, the way free-marketeer Paul Ryan tried to do. (Later, when the folks at The Corner got their ideological bearings again, it was all about those lazy featherbedding union types who killed the American Dream anyway.) And, ultimately, there&amp;#039;s simple childlike faith to fall back on.... Finally, Ryan&amp;#039;s critics cannot stomach the fact that Ryan refuses to play along with their caricatures of him as an uncaring Randian, obsessed with individualism and indifferent to the needs of the vulnerable. In his speech, Ryan specifically noted that a society should be measured by how well the strong protect the weak. Of course, other quarters weighed in. Professional prevaricator and CNN contributor (but I repeat myself) Ari Fleischer chimed in with some barefaced non-facts of his own. I suspect that, within a week, the consensus among the elite political media will once again settle on Who Really Knows All The Facts Anyway, and that Paul Ryan&amp;#039;s reputation as a genial policy wonk will be re-established, and the search for &amp;quot;common ground&amp;quot; on which we can all agree to starve granny will resume apace. However, we do have the Beltway press&amp;#039;s sudden spasm of actual honesty to thank for the most singularly stupid piece of writing The Washington Post it likely ever will publish, even if it renews Marc Thiessen&amp;#039;s contract for the next 20 years. Just because someone tells you different facts than you remember from when you were there watching the event happen doesn&amp;#039;t mean that he is lying. It may just mean that he is trying to be elected to something. Besides, there is literal truth and story truth and narrative truth and speech truth, and, of the four, literal truth most seldom gets invited to parties. Conversation as we know it would end. Politics consists of assembling a convincing story about events out of the facts at your disposal and seeing how many people prefer your story to your opponent&amp;#039;s. We all start with the same fabric of fact, but a lot of art goes into the draping. There are lies, damned lies, statistics and Things Your Opponent Did to Grandma. To bolster this bold proposition, the author summons up... Dead Obi-Wan Kenobi. And concludes with a terrible head-on collision of metaphors at which it became impossible for the paramedics to free coherence from the wreckage, even with the jaws of life. Told from one perspective, Darth Vader is the man who killed your father. Told from another, he is your father. Either way, best not to cut Medicare. Regardless, political speeches are a strange place to start as a prospector for literal truth. They are not the richest of veins. If they were, America would be entirely carpeted in log cabins. Honestly, at this point, the world would be better off if The Washington Post were simply turned into a five-story Keno palace with a wet bar. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a15559/paul-ryan-speech-fact-check-12214493/>