OBAMARAMA

As is so consistently their custom, conservative blogs picked up and ran with a report claiming that Sen. Obama made a mistake — in this case, that he misstated the fuel economy of Japanese-made cars — without checking to see if he was actually wrong.

Newsflash: he wasn’t.

As Media Matters for America documents, the hubbub began when a Chicago Tribune columnist “wrote that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) ‘has more homework to do’ and ’should [hire] a fact-checker’ because Obama stated that ‘Japanese cars [are] now getting an average of 45 miles to the gallon.’” The article quoted a Toyota rep saying “I’m not sure where he got that figure…No carmaker gets 45 m.p.g.”

Instantly, rightwing blogs picked this up and ran with it like a fat kid with a piece of cake. As Hotline On Call points out, the rightwing media site Newsbusters used it as an excuse to launch one more liberal bias jihad against the media:

Obama makes another mistake, will media report it? –The junior senator and god-in-the-making bungles the facts on the fuel efficiency of American and Japanese cars. Will the media report this “lie?”

As of this posting, Newsbusters has yet to wipe the egg off their face. But the facts are undeniable, as the Hotline and Media Matters also note. From the Hotline:

Obama was right. In the US, Japanese-made cars would get 45 m.p.g. assuming they were subjected to the US fuel economy test cycle. Here’s the wonky paper he based his claim on.

And MMFA:

The report also stated that, according to the Japanese Automobile Manufacturers Association, the 2002 average fleet fuel economy value in Japan was 46.3 miles per gallon. More recently, on March 21, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) asked former Vice President Al Gore at a House hearing if he supported an “increase [in fuel-economy standards] like they have in Japan, that’s over 45 miles per gallon?”

Media Matters goes on helpfully to chart the uncorrected, mindless repetition of this falsehood through the conservative blogosphere. I’m beginning to understand why unaccountability is so rampant among Republican politicians, who apparently take the cue from their supporters…

• In a May 10 blog post, National Review Online contributor Jim Geraghty wrote that Obama “Botched the Facts” and that the column was a “good catch.”
• In a May 10 post, Power Line blogger Paul Mirengoff uncritically wrote that “Jim Geraghty reports that Obama botched his facts.” Fellow Power Line blogger John Hinderaker added that “Obama is showing a disconcerting tendency to make things up, as well as a lack of common sense” because “it should be obvious that no company’s entire fleet of automobiles — let alone a country’s — averages 45 mpg.”
• In a May 11 post, Jim Addison of Wizbang Politics uncritically cited Mirengoff’s post, writing that Obama “misstated fuel economy statistics, according to Paul Mirengoff of Power Line.” Addison added that “Obama’s youth and inexperience is [sic] beginning to show.”
• A May 11 post on Human Events Online’s Rightometer blog linked to the Tribune column under the headline “Obama Must be Tired Again.” The post also quoted “The Whistler” of the blog Say Anything, who wrote in a May 11 post about the Tribune column that Obama is “a fool” who is “willing to make up anything he has to” and suggested that Obama has no “grip on reality.”

Memo to conservative bloggers: it’s called research. Give it a try sometime.