Sarah Palin won Politfact's "Lie of the Year" for her claim that the health-care reform bill would set up "death panels," which would decide whether elderly people were worth further medical care or not:
Her assertion — that the government would set up boards to determine whether seniors and the disabled were worthy of care — spread through newscasts, talk shows, blogs and town hall meetings. Opponents of health care legislation said it revealed the real goals of the Democratic proposals. Advocates for health reform said it showed the depths to which their opponents would sink. Still others scratched their heads and said, "Death panels? Really?"
I'd just like to point out that telling flagrant, outrageous, prize winning whoppers won't keep you from getting some space on the Washington Post's op-ed page, particularly if you traffic like this.
Even more embarrassing, I suppose, was the way in which Palin's popularity among the base prompted conservative intellectuals to defend the claim as "true" in some abstract sense.
-- A. Serwer
