Mark Kenny, and the preference is to dissemble about the preferencing ...

Here's the Greens voting advice in the recent NSW election, borrowed from the Pure Poison mob, where they ran News Ltd War on the Greens tactic #1: shamelessly make stuff up, wherein they get upset at David Penberthy's claim that the Greens chose to direct preferences to the One Nation founder ahead of the ALP ... (see Ponborthy punching on punch drunk in The Punch here).

Um, no they didn’t. That is not true. Labor is whinging that the Greens declined to issue preferences in the upper house – as if it’s their responsibility to tell their voters who to preference, rather than their voters’ own bloody choice – but I haven’t seen anyone shameless enough to declare in print that the Greens actually preferenced One Nation.

Probably because it’s pretty easy to disprove ...

Um, sorry, but the hunt for the utterly shameless might turn into a never ending story, because today in the punch drunk Punch, punching on, following on Penbo, there's a blithe Mark Kenny blithely scribbling in Green slip shows they're no compulsory third party:

Indeed it may yet squeak home in the final upper house seat - edging out Pauline Hanson which the party had mystifyingly preferenced ahead of Labor, to its enduring shame - and is still something of a chance in Balmain.

Yes, it certainly is mystifying. And it's certainly a matter of enduring shame. And it helps explain why reading Mark Kenny is a waste of a life ...

The Pure Poison folk attempted to tackle Penbo on his deconstruction of the English language - a Sisyphian task - but how to explain to Kenny the actual meaning of preferencing, which is to indicate a preference, and where there is an absence of a preference, there is no preferencing. Unless you think an absence of an actual preference is de facto an active preference.

Perhaps there's a simpler explanation, and we and the minions of Murdoch can thank Vladimir Lenin for a solid methodology:

A lie told often enough becomes the truth.

Or perhaps we could resort to William James:

There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.

Or perhaps we could resort to Goebbels:

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

Oops, it turns out that's a lie, because Goebbels apparently never said it, though if you google it you can get thousands of references attributing it to him.

I guess if you keep repeating something, over time it accretes solidity, and turns from myth to fact. That's the John Ford Liberty Valance solution. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend ...

Here's one bit of business Goebbels actually wrote about lying:

One should not as a rule reveal one’s secrets, since one does not know if and when one may need them again. The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous. (here, with a link to Goebbels' original article).

Yes that conjures up the spirit of the Murdoch press. At least the looking and the sounding ridiculous bit. Rather like the NSW Labor party whining about the way the Greens didn't love them anymore by refusing to preference them. No one loved them anymore ...

And you can work all this out without being either a Greens or a Labor party voter, or a journalist turned out and dressed up as an misrepresenting, mis-preferencing ideologue ...

Surely now we have room for a little Hitler in Mein Kampf?

“In this they [the Jews] proceeded on the sound principle that the magnitude of a lie always contains a certain factor of credibility, since the great masses of the people in the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously and purposely evil, and that, therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds, they more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big. Such a falsehood will never enter their heads, and they will not be able to believe in the possibility of such monstrous effrontery and infamous misrepresentation in others.…” (p. 231 of the Manheim translation, here)

Ah well, there's a specific historical point to that quote, which you can find in the link, and I see we've strayed a little far from how the Greens allegedly preferenced Pauline Hanson, while actually preferencing no one, because a refusal to preference is somehow a preference and therefore enduring shame ... as opposed to the enduring shame of the Murdoch minions ...

... and nothing is but what is not, and Alice went down the rabbit hole to drink some LSD in a bottle and nibble a hash cookie full of currants and take a toke with a caterpillar like any sensible young Victorian girl ...

... and you can get a similar effect by watching NSW politics in action or reading the Murdoch press ...

(Below: at least it provides a chance to link to Alice in Wonderland, here, courtesy of the University of Adelaide library, and to show her drinking the Murdoch kool aid. Take care little innocent Victorian girl).