A Clash of ‘Alternative’ and ‘Facts’

 https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-clash-of-alternative-and-facts-1485454691

 When Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Donald Trump, went on NBC’s “Meet the Press” last Sunday, she uttered two words that critics found emblematic of a new “post-truth” era in American politics: “alternative facts.”

Ms. Conway was commenting on a series of false statements that the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, had made inflating the size of the crowd at Mr. Trump’s inauguration. “You’re saying it’s a falsehood, and Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that,” she told NBC’s Chuck Todd. He responded, “Look, alternative facts are not facts. They’re falsehoods.”

Ms. Conway found a more receptive audience for her phrasing in a Monday interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News, who said that “alternative facts” simply provide “a different perspective.” But the damage had been done. The phrase swiftly became a full-fledged meme on social media, with the #alternativefacts hashtag humorously deployed to satirize Orwellian doublespeak. (An example from Twitter : “Officer, I am not drunk, I am alternative sober, #alternativefacts.”)