[dhYTvlAv]

Last week a young conservative friend of mine suggested I was harsher toward Republicans and more likely to dismiss mistakes and downright dirty deeds if they were committed by Democrats. I disagreed and reminded him that I am neither R nor D, just a voter who chooses her candidates one man (or woman) at a time, regardless of their party affiliation. I also told him: if I’ve had more negative things to say about Republicans lately, it is because they’ve deserved it. Hmmmph.

But it bothered me for days. Whenever I heard snippets on the news about the tragedy in Libya and suggestions that Team Obama blew it big time I wondered: was I really being as fair and impartial as I could be? I wasn’t.

So last Friday morning I turned on my car radio and tuned it to the local conservative talk station. I was confident that Glenn Beck would wet himself at the chance to point my way toward any transgression Barack Obama might have made. He didn’t disappoint. Later in the day I dialed in to see what Rush Limbaugh had to say. Ditto. In fact, if I was the kind of person who already harbored a low opinion of our president, I probably would have hated him by the time I arrived home.

But I don’t hate Obama and hate wasn’t supposed to be what this was about anyway. What I was after was the same thing I’m always after … the truth. So I spent a big chunk of Friday night investigating, and a few more chunks on Saturday. And Sunday. And the beginning of this week, and here’s what I found:

There are a lot of ways to tell a story. One group might want to put the best face possible on an event – they might gloss over facts or downplay the backstory. They might try to not talk about it at all -- as if we’d all just forget and move along. Another group might want to put the worst possible face on the same incident. They might cherry pick their facts or infer things that really aren’t logically inferable. They might repeat these wrongheaded points incessantly -- as if quantity ever truly trumped quality.

And then there’s the story in between these stories. It’s the kernels of truth that drop out of both baskets that I try to collect. Nobody makes that easy. You’ve got to plow through a mountain of b*llsh*t. It’s work. But, you know what? The truth is worth a little work. Actually, it’s worth a whole lot of work. It’s the most important thing -- but sometimes, in our petty bias, or in our desire for “our side” to “win”, we forget that.

What this was NOT:
1. It was not a stellar display of our intelligence capabilities.
2. Nor was it a shining example of transparency.
3. It was not a spontaneous demonstration.
4. It was not an attack on our embassy. (Trust me, that turns out to be important.)
5. It was not a “seven hour firefight”.
6. Or a “nine hour firefight”.
7. It was not a conscious choice that our president made to sit in the situation room “probably with a bucket of popcorn and a Big Gulp” as one commenter on another site suggested – and watch our citizens die.

What was it then? That’s complicated and I have to go to work in a minute. But I’ll be back later to see what YOU guys think about it and add my two cents (or twenty dollars) worth.