Rachel Maddow ANGRY!!!

This is exciting: Rachel Maddow is totally p*****d off about PolitFact!

So, Martina Navratilova claimed that you can get fired for being gay or perceived as gay in 29 states. PolitiFact found out that there are 29 states that lack specific protections regarding sexuality. So (according to Rachel Maddow) the statement is TRUE, TRUE, TRUE!!!!!!

Yet PolitiFact rated the statement as "Half True". Which shows, according to Maddow, that "the very important concept of fact-checking has become pointless at a time in our country when we really need it to mean something". According to Maddow, PolitiFact "decided it didn't seem seemly or whatever to call it true, so then they researched unrelated information about other things besides states, like some companies decided they don't wanna discriminate, doesn't that count for something?? No! Because that is not the statement you were fact-checking. The statement you were supposed to be fact-checking is true, and until somebody figures out how to sue you in order to retrieve the word "fact" from the dark and airless hole you have stuffed it into, PolitiFact, then no, it is not OK for you to make this stuff up. You are truly terrible."

This is exciting because it shows how important it is that we have a more consistent and objective classification scheme for the kinds of statements that are subject to fact-checking, so we don't devolve into angry finger-pointing and name-calling like this. Semantics and pragmatics to the rescue!

(I guess it's good television, and maybe we don't want to take that away from the world, but maybe there's a way to have good television that doesn't involve angry ape grunts.)

It seems that PolitiFact was addressing a possible alternative interpretation of Navratilova's statement when they were looking into these details. Rachel Maddow's rant is passionately founded upon the presumption that there is only one possible interpretation of the statement, and that the statement can only either be true or false. Well, once you pick an interpretation, I agree that "what is said" (setting implicatures and such aside) can only be true or false, but there is such a thing as ambiguity, and even if Navratilova's statement was not particularly ambiguous, PolitiFact is not "terrible" for looking into alternative interpretations.

I think that what Martina Navratilova intended to convey was true, and what she intended to convey is possibly how most people would interpret the statement (although I wouldn't have known to verify it in quite that way myself), so the alternative possible interpretations that PolitiFact implicitly looked into are probably less likely interpretations. But it is not fair to say that they "researched unrelated information".

What PolitiFact should have said was that Martina Navratilova's statement can be interpreted in several ways:

1. In 29 states, state law does not prohibit firing people for being homosexual or perceived as such.
2. In 29 states, there are some jobs that you can get fired from for being homosexual or perceived as such (an "existential" interpretation -- "there are some")
3. In 29 states, no matter what job you have or where you work, throughout the entire state, you can be fired for being homosexual or perceived as such (a "universal" interpretation -- for all jobs)
4. In 29 states, it is the rule rather than the exception that you can be fired for being homosexual or perceived as such (a "generic" interpretation -- this is typically or usually the case)

Interpretation #1 is clearly the case. (You might think we don't need a distinction between interpretations #1 and #2, but they are logically independent. One might imagine that there are other protections that people can use which cover all the cases, so laws specifically prohibiting this kind of discrimination would be redundant. Then interpretation #1 would be true and interpretations 2-4 would be false.) 

Interpretation #2 also seems to be quite true: In 29 states, some jobs are like that.

Interpretation #3 ("all jobs are like that") is what PolitiFact showed to be false.

And they may have succeeded in casting doubt on Interpretation #4, the generic interpretation, because the gender-related discrimination laws may make it so that in most cases, it is actually illegal to fire someone if you merely perceive that they are gay.

I think that Interpretation #4 is actually a fairly reasonable interpretation. I don't know if I would have gone all the way down to "Half True" on the Truth-O-Meter, but I think there is a somewhat reasonable interpretation of Navratilova's statement that might not be the case.

So I'm in the strange position of defending PolitiFact here, even though this whole blog was founded upon a critique of PolitiFact. But the larger point is that we need to be able to use words like ambiguity in the public discourse, and discuss multiple possible interpretations, so we don't have to resort to angry name-calling.