More desperation on AZCentral -- false characterization to validate false myth "that both sides do it."

First it was normally Liberal columnist E.J. Montini playing rhetorical games to hide the truth.

A day later, political reporters Mary Jo Pitzl and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez co-author another brazenly false record to propagandize and confuse voters.

The candidates for governor are using guilt-by-association tactics to vilify each other and cast doubt on their opponents' character.

Democrat Fred DuVal's campaign links his rival to a social scientist accused of racism. Republican Doug Ducey connects his opponent to Saddam Hussein's PR guru.

The links are tenuous, but both campaigns and Arizona's Democratic and Republican parties have been trying to hammer home the associations on Twitter and Facebook and with e-mail blasts.

Something's going on with Gannett's editors. This doesn't make sense. What's tenuous is having people who obviously know better make claims that cannot be substantiated.

Pitzl and Sanchez go on to equate bullshit claims that some (now) dead guy threw a party for Fred DuVal in 2001 and contributed to Fred's campaign when he ran for Congress with Scrooge McDucey HIMSELF lauding Charles Murray, the white nationalist author of The Bell Curve, in a Koch brother's sausage fest.

Can you honestly tell me these two things are equivalent?

This tells me two things.

1. The Republic is "in the tank" for Scrooge McDucey.
2. McDucey, despite claims that he's polling with an 8 percent lead right now, is desperate enough to lie, cheat and try to steal the election with subterfuge.

After the Republic endorsed Democrats Ann Kirkpatrick (CD1), Kyrsten Sinema (CD9), David Garcia (Superintendent of Public Instruction), Felecia Rotellini (Attorney General), Jim Holway (Corporation Commission) and Terry Goddard (Secretary of State), and published lame endorsements for Republican Martha McSally (CD2, refuses to answer questions about her positions) and Tom Forese (Corp. Comm., and a MAJOR lobbyist gift whore who is still facing unresolved campaign finance complaints)... the Republic is desperate to restore its conservative street cred.

The Republic appears incapable of either coping with the truth of its precarious position in the community or TELLING the truth to that community.

In a blog post a day or so ago, I wrote:

If the media actually represented and set forth the good of the community as its primary purpose, rather than to promote the interests of those who advertise with them, there would be less of a need for mailers and videos starkly portraying the weaknesses of candidates.

Now, it appears a corollary applies:

If the media actually represented and set forth the good of the community as its primary purpose, rather than clinging to the notion that they must pander to a readership they believe wants conservative bias, then they would not have to demand their reporters and columnists fudge and make such obviously false claims and rationalizations.