More Lies from Marc Ambinder

The Atlantic Monthly death spiral continues.

Let's begin with a rhetoric lesson:

Synecdoche - Wikipedia: Synecdoche from Greek συνεκδοχη, "simultaneous understanding" (pronounced /sɪˈnɛkdəkɪ/) is a figure of speech in which: a term denoting a part of something is used to refer to the whole thing, or a term denoting a thing (a "whole") is used to refer to part of it, or a term denoting a specific class of thing is used to refer to a larger, more general class, or a term denoting a general class of thing is used to refer to a smaller, more specific class, or a term denoting a material is used to refer to an object composed of that material...

Douglas Holtz-Eakin said:

CBS Horserace: "He did this"... holding up his BlackBerry.... "Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce committee so you're looking at the miracle John McCain helped create and that's what he did"...

Doug was engaging in this rhetorical form of συνεκδοχη, using his Blackberry device as a pointer to refer to the more general class of things that together make up the complex of telecommunications innovations of the past fifteen years. He was not claiming that John McCain invented the Blackberry.

Marc Ambinder never bothered to even try to get the story right:

Marc Ambinder: Who Needs Obama When The McCain Campaign'll Run Against Itself?: There shouldn't be a debate about it: the McCain campaign has made a hash out of the first three days of the week, and most of the forks were manufactured in Arlington.... [For example:] The adviser who bragged about McCain's inventing the Blackberry...

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?