“Words, words, words”

-Hamlet

My previous article posted October 10, 2016 and titled A Plague on Both Your Houses was generated by my revulsion to a vicious lie. I specifically dealt with only one of the two presidential candidates because the lie was beyond politics as usual. But in terms of the other candidate, the title of that article speaks for itself.

Now I’d like to reveal another kind of lie. This time it is about our Fourth Estate. This time it is about the abuse of free speech. This time it is about subtext that is deliberately designed to trick a reader into thinking what he is reading means something other than the actual text. This time the lie is the “smoke and mirrors” of dishonest wordsmiths. A not so subtle but perfect example of their dishonesty follows.

On October 23 AOL writes: Among Democrats and Democrat-leaning likely voters, 88 percent said that Clinton won the (third) debate. An overwhelming majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning likely voters, 77 percent said that Trump won the (third) debate. [underlines mine]

My question: Why is 77 percent overwhelming while 88 percent is not!