Lawrence O'Donnell's MSNBC 'Lean Forward' Ad Rated 'Mostly False' By Politifact (VIDEO)

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell is the topic of a new rating by fact-checking site, Politifact.

Politifact looked into O'Donnell after a reader asked the organization to assess the validity of one of the prime time host's "Lean Forward" ads for MSNBC. The "Lean Forward" ads, which have a distinct style, are directed by award-winning filmmaker Spike Lee. The commercials feature network hosts pontificating about political issues of the day while seemingly in mid-conversation with Lee. Hosts including Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Andrea Mitchell, Al Sharpton, Ed Schultz and O'Donnell are featured the ads.

In one of the many ads, O'Donnell discusses the 1944 passing of the GI Bill. Politifact investigated O'Donnell's claim that critics called the GI Bill welfare. "It’s the most successful educational program that we’ve ever had in this country — and the critics called it welfare," O'Donnell said in the ad.

Politifact rated this statement "mostly false" after reading a reporter's 1949 article that detailed the bill's roots, looking through commentaries from the early 1950s, and speaking to multiple historians. Overall, Politifact said, "There were concerns aired as Congress debated the matter that the unemployment benefits would lead some beneficiaries to laze around. But we ultimately found no evidence of critics referring to the GI Bill as welfare. O’Donnell’s claim rates Mostly False."

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow has been a harsh critic of Politifact. She has dismissed some of the the organization's ratings and, most recently, called the organization "a disaster."

View O'Donnell's "Lean Forward" ad below::

Also on HuffPost:

View a slideshow of MSNBC's "Lean Forward" ads below:

• Chris Matthews

• Rachel Maddow

• Lawrence O'Donnell

• Ed Schultz

• Al Sharpton

• Rachel Maddow

• Chris Matthews

• Lawrence O'Donnell

• Ed Schultz

• Rachel Maddow

• Chris Matthews

• Original 'Lean Forward' Ad

Comments

[teenage fanclub]

11:39 AM on 02/22/2012

Politifact then announced that Obama is a Muslim Born in Kenya, Reagenomics shrunk our deficit, and George Bush won the Iraq war.

No! They're committed to focusing on the syntax of liberal commercials. For America!

[mikesnl]

11:22 AM on 02/27/2012

Another PolitiFact finding: The Obama admin lied when it stated Paul Ryan's budget would destroy Medicare. Indeed, this bunch of short-sighted, self-congratulatory journalists dubbed the Obama statement the big political lie of 2011. So remember, all you teen fans out there, if it's PolitiFact, it's probably crap.

[bigdawg 44]

10:09 AM on 02/22/2012

Ya gotta be kidd'in... Does ANYONE ever take Lawrence O'Donnell serious ????????????

[Venus De Kitty]

02:49 PM on 02/22/2012

Yes.

Why so many question marks? Keyboard stuck?

[MooseShady]

03:13 PM on 02/24/2012

and doing a little spell check wouldn't hurt him much either. LOL!!

[Bob Sheerin]

01:39 AM on 04/04/2012

O'Donnell is a self-important intelligent fool. The only people that pay attention to him need their head examined.

[Keith Dyett]

12:58 AM on 02/22/2012

First of all O'Donnell and Maddow are both wrong this bill was called the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 not the G.I Bill. So according to everyone here, both are highly respected journalist who check their facts, how come the Bill's real name was never mentioned, From doing my own research, I will give some O'Donnell credit, yes the word "welfare" was commonly used in reference to this Bill but according to reports and archive material the use of the word "Welfare" was overwhelmingly positive, not negative: The concept of “welfare” scarcely existed in the 1940s. and the said Bill was described by historian William O’Neill as “the brightest thing Congress ever did.”

[clear voice]

10:20 PM on 02/21/2012

At least the lean forward statement is true.
That's MSNBC's new call sign.. "Lean Forward, Media Matters will drive it home"

[Consequence]

08:05 PM on 02/21/2012

Poor O'Donnell...

Unable to tell the difference between assisting someone financially who risked their life for American - in a way that will let them get a good job and pay taxes the rest of their lives (thus recouping more over time than they originally provided......

.....and giving someone money for no other reason that they are breathing, and increasing that money with every additional child they have.

[John Shaw]

09:36 PM on 02/21/2012

WTF are you talking about!?! Politifact rated the ad as mostly false when it wasn't.

He stated that past criticism compared the Act which rewarded former veterans with the GI Bill to that of welfare.

He was actually for the GI Bill.

Dude: Reading Comprehension is fundamental...Get some.

[MarvinM]

07:26 PM on 02/21/2012

from dictionary.com:

wel·fare ...
3. financial or other assistance to an individual or family from a city, state, or national government: Thousands of jobless people in this city would starve if it weren't for welfare.

from Webster’s II New College Dictionary (1995)

wel·fare ...
3. Provision of economic or social benefits to a certain group of people, esp. aid furnished by the government or private agencies to the disadvantaged or disabled.

from the Politifact article;

“In his 2009 book, "Beyond the Bonus March and GI Bill," Stephen Ortiz, an assistant professor of history at Binghamton University, says Rankin "viewed the educational features (of the GI Bill) with skepticism, believing that only a small percentage of already privileged veterans would take advantage of them. Moreover, he treated the unemployment features with outright disdain.”

*****

So Rankin, a critic, treated the unemployment features with disdain. The unemployment features, giving money (providing “economic benefits”) to an individual, from the national government.

Politifact’s own produced evidence sounds like the definition of welfare to me, at least according to these two dictionary sources.

By the evidence in their very own article, I would have rated the statement Mostly True (not fully True, due to the fact that there seems to be no evidence that anyone at the time the GI Bill was written actually used the word ‘welfare’ to characterize it, but it is clear there were critics, and they did use all the same terminology that is associated with welfare today).

[alguien]

06:41 PM on 02/21/2012

no one should ever regard politifact's fact checking as accurate.

[Westof405]

06:30 PM on 02/21/2012

Some of the guys I knew in college who were there on the GI Bill had been in Viet Nam and I don't mean as tourists. The GOP is against anything that helps anyone but themselves and their cronies. They want other people's kids to fight wars for them, but don't want to care for them when they come home and need jobs and medical care, in many cases, for life. It is despicable how selfish these people are.

[MarcU]

03:26 PM on 02/21/2012

At least according to the American Legion, opponents of the original GI Bill argued that "'The lazy and 'chisely' types of veterans would get the most benefits,whereas the resourceful. industrious and conscientious veterans would get the least benefits, if any." http://www.legion.org/documents/legion/pdf/gibillpitkinpt2.pdf

This doesn't use the word "welfare" but it describes exactly how the term used today as a pejorative. Too bad Politifact couldn't be bothered to spend the same 5 minutes it took me using "the Google" to dig this up.

[cclaker]

02:42 PM on 02/21/2012

I started being suspect of Politifact's contortions to be politically correct and ending up with false logic a year ago. The train has gone off the track. FactCheck.org is more reliable.

[bhaines213]

02:24 PM on 02/21/2012

PolitiFact has not only lost its integrity, it’s lost its common sense. Why are they even evaluating ads by commentators? Also, this is another instance where their own analysis doesn’t support their conclusion. Are they going to evaluate promos and ads for all stations or just MSNBC? Have they evaluated Faux New’s claim of being ‘Fair and Balanced’? There’s no shortage of Faux ads to choose from. PolitiFact should choose at least one from Faux and then show their analysis. Let’s see if this is just some kind of petty vendetta against MSNBC.

[Exhaust]

10:16 PM on 02/21/2012

You should try reading past the first sentence. Like...maybe the second sentence, that tells you why they are evaluating the ads. And...the "they're worse then we are" argument is sweet. LOL

[BenjitheWolfdog]

02:11 PM on 02/21/2012

So what did politifact object to? Do they dispute that the GI bill was the most successful educational program in our history, which was the point of the ad? Not from what I can see. If I read their objection, it is that O'Donnell uses "on the dole" interchangefully with "welfare." Of course, anyone who was born before 1980 knows that 'on the dole" means living on public assistance and meant that since the first Great Depression in the 1930's. One can quibble over whether "on the dole" and "welfare" mean the same but it doesn't alter the fact that the GI bill was incredibly successful government program that invested in the middle class. If the O'Donnell had just used "on the dole" instead of "welfare" the is no question that the ad would have been 100% accurate. At worst the ad true and perhaps is unclear to the x-generation. Perhaps the problem is lack of historical prespective which could be remedied by doing a little reading.

[fisherdude1969]

02:05 PM on 02/21/2012

"But we ultimately found no evidence of critics referring to the GI Bill as welfare."

So.....wouldn't you expect Maddow and O'Donnell to then show their proof of critics referring to it as welfare? Did I miss that part?

[hypyrwyf]

04:22 PM on 02/21/2012

You must have, because I saw Maddow cover it.

[Consequence]

08:07 PM on 02/21/2012

She SPOKE on it, critiquing...

...but she didn't present a shred of evidence.

[Westof405]

06:22 PM on 02/21/2012

Yes, you did-last night Rachel pointed out criticism of the GI Bill by a politician back then as the equivalent of "the dole", which is the British slang for their welfare system. They also call shopping carts a "trolley" but that doesn't mean if you talk about a trolley, you aren't talking about a shopping cart. The same applies to hundreds of other words. Obviously, no one at Politifact has gone OS (slang for overseas or traveling abroad).

Politifact is pretty worthless, as Rachel has pointed out several times lately. "Finding no evidence" is hardly the same as "there isn't any evidence." For centuries people thought the earth was flat. No doubt if Politifact was around back then, they would have rated that statement as "100% true."

[fisherdude1969]

03:36 PM on 02/22/2012

So....shouldn't O'Donnell change his commercial now? Instead of saying "critics called it welfare," he should say "a single person said it was the equivalent of the dole?"

[Consequence]

01:58 PM on 02/21/2012

Poor Lawrence,
Can't quite comprehend the difference between giving someone financial assistance for them risking their lives for all Americans, helping them to get a degree that will let them get a job and actually pay taxes...

...and...

Giving someone financial support simply for breathing and increasing that amount every single time they have an additional child...

[1hotgolfer]

02:27 PM on 02/21/2012

My take on this was simply, the critics of the GI Bill made comments very similar to those made about welfare and unemployment payments...by "giving" the beneficiaries (many who were combat veterans) money, "they would laze around." That's the same said about welfare recipients. We heard the same during discussions regarding extending unemployment benefits.

[eminencefrontman]

03:04 PM on 02/21/2012

No you can't quite comprehend that anything the federal government spends on other than entitlements (which the GI Bill was not,) and interest on the debt is discretionary spending and any of those funds used for social programs is collectively known as "welfare." It is obvious by the paternalistic tone of the post that "welfare" and drivel about paying money "every single time they have an additional child" (which is patently untrue,) is being used as an implied club to bash social welfare programs, which it should be noted also include subsidies to state universities and allowing a write-off of interest paid on home mortgages. So before you start pontificating you should best get your facts straight.

[watoos013]

01:55 PM on 02/21/2012

Turns out Odonnell was correct. Politi-fact doesn't know the meaning of the word dole.

[CojoinednessBrasserie]

04:50 PM on 02/23/2012

apparently if Lawrence were going to speak about an event that occurred in the middle ages he'd have to use middle english terms or Politifact is gonna ding him again for not beginning the sentence "Yay twas he who spaketh..."