Pants on Fire: The Pilot’s editorial page

There Steve goes again with his cheap shots, twisted facts and exaggerations in an unsigned editorial.  I am really going to keep South Carolina congressman Joe Wilson BUSY this election season. 

(First off, on behalf of the conservative community, I want to thank you for endorsing Renee Ellmers.  Among area conservatives, an endorsement from The Pilot is commonly referred to as “the kiss of death.”  Nice work.)

The Pilot enjoys propping up and promoting Republican figures who give party activists heartburn.  (Remember all of those Richard Morgan endorsements?  Though, they didn’t work in 2006,2008, or 2010.  Hopefully The Pilot’s streak will continue into 2012.) 

Take today’s unsigned screed:

Republican Ellmers, a nurse by training, campaigned two years ago as a conservative firebrand dead-set against “Obamacare.” She managed to beat longtime Democratic Rep. Bob Etheridge by a razor-thin margin, helped along by Etheridge’s ugly confrontation with some provocative videographers. (Etheridge is now seeking the governorship.)

Let’s look at the videotape. Asking if he supported “The Obama Agenda” was provocative?  Wow, talk about revisionist history.  Talk about spinning.  Talk about exaggerating and outright lying.  Read On:

Early on, Ellmers gained a reputation as something of an extremist. She won an enthusiastic endorsement from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, and her 2008 TV ad against the Park51 community center in Manhattan was criticized by Salon as “the mostly baldly anti-Muslim ad of the year.”

So, aligning yourself with Sarah Palin is extremist?    Wow, Steve.  You are insulting QUITE A FEW Moore County residents — your neighbors — with that one.  Read On:

Some say she has moderated a bit in her views since taking office, though she denies it. In any case, she has publicly opposed the anti-gay-marriage Amendment One proposal that appears on the May 8 North Carolina ballot. That prompted far-right Republican primary opponent Richard Speer to say she “doesn’t sound very conservative to me,” though she says she worries about unforeseen discrimination that could flow from the phraseology in the second half of the amendment’s text.

First, how are your readers supposed to evaluate the marriage amendment, Steve, when your paper REFUSES to print the actual text of the proposed amendment?

Second, Steve, far-right is a slanderous, dishonest term.  People of your ilk typically refer to anyone who stands by the GOP platform as “far right.”

Also, how are your readers supposed to fairly evaluate Speer or any of the other candidates in this race?  I don’t recall your newsroom providing ANY kind of coverage on the race.

You are also terribly misrepresenting Speer’s statements.  The “doesn’t sound very conservative to me” comment typically comes after a long list of Ellmers’s betrayals of her 2010 conservative supporters, such as raising the debt ceiling limit, becoming a lapdog for John Boehner and Eric Cantor,  and voting for a continuing resolution that allowed funding for ObamaCare to proceed.

It’s pathetic that The Pilot — on many of today’s most pressing issues — treats its readers like mushrooms. Keeping them in the dark, and feeding them BS.