I think we can all admit that the left has a near monopoly on facts. We saw this at play during the presidential debates, we see this when we look over the websites of
Media Matters or
FAIR or
The Daily Howler. We know that their side is stuffed people like O'Reilly or Coulter whose standard argumentative technique is to make up 'facts' primarily to create a climate of uncertainty and cynicism.
We haven't been doing enough to counteract that. Since we're the opposition party, and out of power pretty much everywhere, we need good political theater to get the true facts across, and we need good political theater to make the utter lack of integrity of O'Reilly et al. widely known.
Now, I've never been on TV, so I don't know how well this will work, but it just worked like a charm in an e-mail fight I had with a winger. The tactic? If you know they're lying, bet them, bet them real money, that they're lying.
Some winger, for some reason, took offense at something I said at pandagon and wrote me a private e-mail suggesting that I hadn't graduated high school. I bet him $1,000 that I had. He whinged that I took his words out of context, so I added in other college degrees and bet him $2,000 that I had them, too: I said, "let me know when you're willing to meet, and I'll come to whatever town you're in. You have a money order, I'll have my diplomas, and we'll meet in front of a police station." He backed off, tail between his legs.
I don't see why, when, say Coulter got facts wrong on Hardball about Patton and George C. Scott, rather than just correcting her, as Chris Matthews did, he shouldn't have instead bet her, say, $10,000 that she was wrong. When Franken corrected O'Reilly about the Peabody/Polk thing rather than just correcting him, he should have won a little money off the bet, and, to humiliate O'Reilly further, he should have donated the $$ to, I don't know, the ACLU.
I'm pretty well convinced this sort of behavior would get positive media coverage AND we'd also get known as the party of facts. Last bonus here is that we'd outbully the bullies.