Four French actresses on their nude debuts

LUDIVINE SAGNIER	ROXANE MESQUIDA
SABRINA SEYVECOU	SOPHIE GUILLEMIN

Sophie Guillemin, at Le Petit Cadet brasserie, in Paris’s 9 arrondissement, on October 17, 2023. MAROUSSIA DUBREUIL

Ludivine Sagnier in the rehearsal halls of the Kourtrajmé film school in Montfermeil, east of Paris, on November 18, 2022. EMMA BURLET FOR LEMONDE

Published on March 31, 2023 • By Maroussia Dubreuil

Four actresses speak of their erotic debuts in film

“You’ve shown yourself nude, darling, no one will forgive you ” Their first major role was erotic. Then, perceived as sub-actresses, loose women, or victims, they often struggled to shake off the character they played on screen. Some suffered for a long time, while others found it a positive experience in the end. Sophie Guillemin, Ludivine Sagnier, Roxane Mesquida, and Sabrina Seyvecou tell their story. All her life, Sylvia Kristel has carried a sense of melancholy, convinced that she wasn't a real actress. After playing the title role inEmmanuelle (1974), by Just Jaeckin, the first mainstream erotic film, the Dutch former model was praised for her unsettling presence, her bewitching nature, and her seductive allure. Despite modest roles in films by Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jean-Pierre Mocky, Claude Chabrol, and Roger Vadim, she never shook off her status as an erotic icon. "I was dressed, but people preferred me naked. I spoke, but they liked me better silent, or dubbed. I realized that the public had been deeply affected by Emmanuelle and wanted to prolong their fantasy, to keep me within it, symbolic and naked, idealized and necessary," she wrote in her 2006 autobiography Nue, dans l’ombre du fantasme (Undressing Emmanuelle: A Memoir), six years before her death at the age of 60.

Sylvia Kristel as the title role in "Emmanuelle (1974)", by Just Jaeckin. NANA PRODUCTIONS/SIPA

As with Kristel, the epitome of ever-lasting sex appeal, the careers of other women failed to survive their lascivious beginnings. Wikipedia tells us that Nanette Corey (José Bénazéraf's(La Soubrette perverse, "The Kinky Maid," 1974) ended up specializing in dubbing. Anne Libert(Robinson and His Tempestuous Slaves, 1972, by Jesus Franco) dedicated herself to rescuing animals. Annie Belle (Lèvres de sang, [(Lips of Blood], 1974, de Jean Rollin), who died in January, retired from cinema to work as a social worker. Jane March, Marguerite Duras's incandescent double in Jean-Jacques Annaud's L’Amant (The Lover, 1992), disappeared from screens a few years after being nicknamed "the Sinner from Pinner" (the name of her childhood neighborhood in London). In recent years, following the #MeToo movement that emerged in late 2017, a lot has changed. Every day, voices speak out against men who took advantage of their position of power, filmmakers strive to offer alternative visual representations of female desire, and actresses are beginning to be somewhat better protected on set, where they can now work with intimacy coordinators tasked with ensuring the smooth execution of sexual scenes. However, one chapter remains unfinished: What happens to actresses whose first roles involved nudity? To what extent is a first major erotic role condemned to being reduced to its pornographic side? What lasting impact does it leave on the performer? Why is an actress judged in terms of modesty? Some of the merit erased Let's face it, debuting nude is not a trivial matter: "That shot had meaning, it wasn't gratuitous," actresses often say to justify it, as if to protect themselves from a danger to which men are, in any case, less exposed. That's because the persistence of preconceived ideas complicates things for the women concerned, who are viewed as sub-actresses, promiscuous or victims."I felt very sad because I was treated like a sex symbol – I wanted to be recognized as an actress," explained Maria Schneider (1952-2011) to the Daily Mail, in 2007, five years after filming Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris, where she was forced to film a sodomy scene with Marlon Brando and butter. How many times afterward was a lump of butter placed under her nose in a restaurant? "The whole circus (...) made me go mad. I got into drugs – pot and then cocaine, LSD and heroin – (...) I took pills to try and commit suicide," she said.

Maria Schneider as Jeanne in "Last Tango in Paris (1972)", by Bernardo Bertolucci. SNAP STILLS/REX FEATURES/SIPA

Catapulted to fame by the first unsimulated fellatio in mainstream cinema, Maruschka Detmers did not escape the media cyclone triggered by Marco Bellocchio's steamy Devil in the Flesh (1986). After 857 interviews – per her tally – the Dutch actress turned down dozens of roles "due to the lack of imagination of those interested," before moving to Mexico. "To reappear, you have to disappear," she told the Quebecois film magazine 24 Images in 1987.

Maruschka Detmers as Giulia and Federico Pitzalis as Andrea in Devil in the Flesh(1986), by Marco Bellocchio. NANA PRODUCTIONS/SIPA It would be inaccurate to say that explicit sex scenes systematically harm the future of those who participate in them. A career's longevity depends on many factors such as talent, photogenicity, charisma, family background, social ease, alignment with the era, roles, popularity and how famous the film is. If we stick to French examples, we need only think of the prestigious filmographies of Emmanuelle Béart, Ludivine Sagnier or even Stacy Martin (who began her career in Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac, in 2013) to be convinced. However, few of them have received awards, as if nudity immediately erased part of the role's merit. Paradoxically, it was Steven Spielberg, as president of the Cannes jury (and a particularly chaste filmmaker, never having shown sex on screen) who had the idea of jointly awarding the Palme d'Or to Abdellatif Kechiche and his actresses Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux, for La Vie d’Adèle (Blue is the Warmest Color), in 2013. The supremacy of the male gaze In 2005, a few years before becoming a journalist, I exposed myself in Les Anges exterminateurs (The Exterminating Angels), by Jean-Claude Brisseau, presented at the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes the following year. At the age of 24, I decided to transgress the rules of good taste, and took on the role of a first-time actress out to discover pleasure. At the time, I wasn't thinking about the supremacy of the male gaze or the objectification of the female body. On the contrary, I saw my assertive eroticism as a source of power: a defiant departure from everything I'd been taught. I knew that Brisseau (who died in 2019) had been accused of sexual misconduct by actresses whom he had subjected to numerous erotic auditions for Choses secrètes (Secret Things, 2002). It was the very subject of this new film. However, the joy of working took precedence over everything else, and I felt protected. I reassured myself that the public outcry from these young women would prevent any misconduct. The erotic auditions were conducted under supervision, with the director's assistant present. Despite the opportunity of this first major role, doubts crept in... Was I sabotaging myself? Would I be looked down upon in the industry? How many actresses had turned down the role before me? As the weeks went by, I was questioned about what happened on set – did I actually sleep with someone? Had the director abused me? On the night of his sentencing in December 2005, to a one-year suspended prison term and a €15,000 fine for sexual harassment against two actresses, I developed a severe rash that itched so intensely that a doctor administered a morphine injection. A year later, at the Académie des César's 2007 Revelations dinner, my two sponsors canceled their attendance. I felt trapped. On the one hand, there was Brisseau, with whom I'd had an interesting cinematic experience. On the other, actresses who were suffering and finding themselves discredited by the press. I wasn't far from thinking that the scorn they faced stemmed from the simple fact that they were actresses, or worse, actresses who had taken their clothes off for auditions. The newspaper France Soir described them with a slang term, "cruches," which means "stupid women."Erotic cinema was a dangerous game, and I soon changed career plans. Here are four stories from actresses – many others refused to speak on the subject – who started out at the beginning of the 2000s, when it was fashionable to film intimacy up close, and who went on to continue their careers. By agreeing to share their experiences, they also debunk some preconceived notions about actors who have stripped down on screen. “The degrading remarksend up making youthink... Did I go too far?” Sophie Guillemin ... {Il primo} “When I was 18, my cousin told a casting assistant about me. She remembered that when I was four, I used to stare at her while petting my cat. It scared her to death, so she thought I'd make a good actress," said Sophie Guillemin, 46. After a series of auditions, she landed the role of Cécilia in L’Ennui(Boredom), Cédric Kahn's adaptation of Alberto Moravia's novel of the same name. It's the story of a fresh-faced teenager who regularly joins Martin, a philosophy professor (played by Charles Berling) lacking emotional fulfillment in bed. She does it for the pleasure of the embrace; he believes he "owns" her. At the time, Guillemin had just graduated from high school and didn't mind taking her clothes off on a film set. On her mother's side, her five uncles attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and she was used to seeing them paint and draw. "Naturally, I placed Cécilia's nudity within the context of art history, alongside the paintings and sculptures of naked women you see in every museum in the world. I hadn't anticipated that the most embarrassing thing would be to find yourself in a cinema with 300 people looking at you naked."

Sophie Guillemin as Cécilia in "L’Ennui (1998)", by Cédric Kahn. JEAN-CLAUDE LOTHER/PHOTO12

On December 16, 1998, the film was released in France, where it received positive reviews and journalists gushed about the actress's Venus-like figure – "the voluptuousness of French cinema," "a living Botero," "the callipygian actress" – whose sensuality stood in stark contrast to the wiry beauty standards of her generation. "While most of the time it wasn't malicious, it was still very insistent. I tried not to pay any attention to it, but one day, just before taking the microphone on a radio show, a guest said I looked like 'a cow grazing in a meadow'... On top of all of that, you have to add insults in the street," she said. "When you're doing a job that's completely innocent, based on the idea of creativity, these degrading remarks end up making you think... Did I go too far?" Torn between criticism and accolades Nominated for the César for Best Female Newcomer in 1999, then again in 2001 for Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien (Harry, He's Here To Help, 2000), by Dominik Moll, Guillemin was lost, torn between criticism and accolades. Everything had happened too quickly. Her mother, a nurse, and her father, a Club Med host, taught her that you had to work hard to earn a living. Suffering from a legitimacy complex and uncomfortable with the industry's snobbery, she took a break from cinema, gave birth to a baby girl and converted to Islam – a religion she practiced for some 15 years. "I'd always believed in the existence of some kind of creator, but I didn't understand the Holy Spirit," she said recently. "Islam seemed much more tangible to me." She was nude in L’Ennui and very scantily clad in Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien, but from then on she wore a veil and refused scenes involving nudity and any explicit physical contact with a man – which immediately eliminated 80% of roles. "It was for religious reasons, but it was also out of a real desire as a woman and an actress. I didn't want to be the chick who gets screwed in every movie. Before my conversion, I turned down Trouble Every Day, by Claire Denis [released in 2001], where you had to get taken from behind on a washing machine. At the same time, rumors started circulating. People were saying that my boyfriend had taken me to Gaddafi's training camps [in Libya], when we were actually living by a lake in Melun." In recent years, with the benefit of hindsight, the actress has relaxed her own rules and returned to film sets. A rebirth: there are five films to come. "In 2023, I played a sex scene, on the set of Les Impatiences [Juliette In Spring], de Blandine Lenoir, the adaptation of the graphic novel Juliette. Les fantômes reviennent au printemps [Juliette: Or, the Ghosts Return in the Spring, by Camille Jourdy, 2016]. It was set in a greenhouse, the setting was beautiful, there was a visual and light-hearted aspect, it was joyful... And then, it's funny to see how you get used to everything. At first, we're a bit embarrassed, hiding ourselves with towels, the team ostensibly averting their eyes. And after half an hour, you forget you're naked." Guillemin recently revisited L’Ennui. "My path has been a complex one vis-à-vis the profession, but the film is a success," she said. “Accumulating roles inwhich I appeared nudedid not earn me onlyrespect ” Ludivine Sagnier {La deuxième} Late 1990s. Ludivine Sagnier hadn't yet made a name for herself, but she was active on all fronts of the profession: She had stopped drama classes and ventured into dubbing, acting in theaters and playing supporting roles in films. "I admired my friends, enrolled in drama school, who had to go through this famous experimental lesson where they had to get naked on stage. What an achievement!" When François Ozon invited her to audition for his erotically tinged third feature, Gouttes d’eau sur pierres brûlantes (Water Drops on Burning Rocks, 2000), an adaptation of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's play, the 19-year-old actress saw it as the perfect opportunity to rise to the challenge. "I didn't think of nude scenes as something twisted. When you're a young actress, it's important to accumulate experiences: doing stunts, crying, laughing... Undressing was just another feat," explained Sagnier, now 44. She was encouraged by her close friends and particularly by her boyfriend at the time, who went the extra mile to support her the night before the shoot. "I was in my little apartment in Paris and I heard someone calling me. I opened the window and saw my boyfriend starting to undress. He said to me: 'You see, I managed to get naked in the street, you'll manage to do it in front of the camera!' I found his gesture adorable." The shoot was straightforward. Her partner Bernard Giraudeau, Ozon and the technicians were all respectful. "When I hear all these sordid stories, I tell myself I was very lucky. I also think that my carefree attitude protected me," she said. "At the time, I thought I was ordinary, I wasn't at all aware of my sex appeal... It was only after the film came out that men's attitudes changed. I was happy that people thought I was pretty, but I went ex-directory because I was receiving extremely indecent calls." Three years later, the actress worked with Ozon once again – in the meantime, they had worked together on Huit femmes (Eight Women). He had written the main role of Swimming Pool specifically for her: Julie, a seductive and sassy young girl, takes advantage of her father's absence to spend a steamy summer at his house in the south of France. "The character had to be hypersexualized. In the industry, they made fun of me because I had hired a personal trainer. Today, that would seem perfectly normal." Four intensive months of strict dieting, workouts, UV exposure followed. "Not to mention the false hair, the false eyelashes... It was a transformation, an acting performance, so much so that during the film's US promotion, when I ran into Charlize Theron, who was doing Monster [by Patty Jenkins], for which she had transformed herself [into a serial killer], I completely identified with her approach."

Ludivine Sagnier as Julie in "Swimming Pool (2003)", by François Ozon. HEADFORCE LTD/CANAL+/KOBAL/AURIMAGES

At junkets (press), interviews usually started in much the same way: "So, Ludivine, you love getting naked in films, tell us about it..." The young woman would notice the crudeness, brush it off and wait for the next question. In the meantime, she received dozens of offers for roles as "bimbos" similar to the protagonist in Swimming Pool, but quite far from what she wanted to do. "The American scripts were highly eroticized, which put me off a bit. But unlike others, I didn't feel at all like I was being subjected to anything." Presented in official selection at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003, Swimming Pool made her a household name abroad, giving her the opportunity to work with some big names, such as Alfonso Cuaron, Hirokazu Kore-eda and Ridley Scott. In 2016, Italian director Paolo Sorrentino filmed her as a fervent Catholic in the miniseries The Young Pope. "I remember a scene we shot with Jude Law [Pius XIII], in March, on the beach of the grand Excelsior Hotel, in Venice. It was 8°C. We had to walk away hand in hand, a little lasciviously, him in boxer shorts, me in a two-piece. And we'd say to each other: 'We're fed up, we wanted to be sex symbols when we were 20, but that's enough now, give us something else! We're in our 40s and it's cold...'." ‘Costume supervisors have always protected us’ There have been "a bunch" of roles that have stripped her bare. "Accumulating these roles did not earn me only respect." Despite three César nominations, the awards didn't follow. "'You've shown yourself nude, darling, no one will forgive you,' an actress friend once told me. That said, I'm proud that my youth has been preserved. I'm happy to have been so pretty." In the wake of #MeToo, intimacy coordinators have been brought onto sets to ensure that erotic scenes run smoothly, usually at the request of producers and directors. "It's important that this system exists, especially for young people just starting out," said Sagnier. "But as far as I'm concerned, working this way hasn't always gone well. Up to now, I've only dealt with English-speaking intimacy coordinators, usually actresses who had experienced abuse on film. But the memory of these traumas loomed large on the sets." Her most recent memory is of the American series The Serpent Queen (2022) in which her character, Diane de Poitiers, has an affair with a young man. "Every morning, we had to sign authorizations with anatomical descriptions. Something like: I agree to be filmed up to the top of the thigh, down to the bottom of the breasts, right up to the anal cleft... During rehearsals, the intimacy coordinator put sex above all else. We felt like we were doing pornography, and it was extremely embarrassing. She projected an obscenity onto us that we hadn't created, whereas there are much more delicate ways of handling things. Costume supervisors have always protected us. They are the guarantors of our intimacy, and know all the techniques to enable us to perform delicate scenes without being embarrassed by our partner's closeness. It's a little-known profession, yet it's essential to the shoot's success." At a time when the pervasiveness of the "male gaze" (which treats women as objects, through the eye of the camera) is under scrutiny, Sagnier has several thoughts about it all. "Either I was a victim of it, or I was complicit in it. I don't think I was a victim, so I question my guilt. By not feeling abused, did I also contribute to the perpetuation of this gaze, to fulfilling the fantasies of old men? Certainly. I don't have the answer." Until April 6, at the Théâtre du Rond-Point in Paris, the actress is playing the one-woman show Le Consentement, adapted from Vanessa Springora's memoir of the same name (Consent: A Memoir, 2020) about her coercive relationship at the age of just 14 with the writer Gabriel Matzneff, who was 50 at the time. “Erotic scenes don't necessarily mean sexual violence; we musn’t confuse everything ” Roxane Mesquida {La tercera} “Catherine Breillat's cinema isn't just about a sex scene here or there, it's about sexuality. A ma sœur (Fat Girls) is about the loss of virginity: If there's no explicit scene, it becomes American Pie," explained Roxane Mesquida, 42, the film's lead actress. First screened at the Berlinale in 2001, A ma sœur fell victim to the filmmaker's reputation for controversy – she was known for depicting the true desires of teenage girls, examining the open war between the sexes, and casting the porn star Rocco Siffredi (Romance, 1999). On stage, the actresses were booed. Originally from Le Pradet, a small resort on the southeastern French coast, 19-year-old Mesquida fiddled with her lapel microphone, pretending to have technical difficulties to dodge audience questions. As the daughter of a writer with little regard for what others thought – "In her punk days, my mother used to walk me to school with a Mohawk" – she was taken aback by its hostile reception. The film magazine Les Cahiers du cinéma considered her suitable for sitcoms.

Anaïs Reboux (left) and Roxane Mesquida in "A ma sœur (2001)", by Catherine Breillat. RONALDGRANT/MARY EVANS/SIPA Even after making three films with Breillat (Sex Is Comedy, in 2002, and Une vieille maîtresse, [The Last Mistress], in 2007), she felt like people wanted her to badmouth the filmmaker. "You'd think I was a masochist!" At casting sessions, directors asked her the same questions: So, Breillat? How did it go? Rather manipulative, isn't she? "I always replied that she's extremely manipulative [in a tactile manner]. She stages you with her hands, she grabs you, she turns you every which way... But there's no psychological manipulation." A director asked her to pose nude during auditions, which he claimed would help him secure financing: "He handed me a scarf to hide my private parts. It was supposed to reassure me... You should have seen his scarf, it was the size of a handkerchief! I refused." While Mesquida's career was slowing down in France, A ma sœur enjoyed critical acclaim in the United States, where it entered the DVD catalog of the prestigious Criterion Collection. "Catherine always advised me to take English lessons: 'It's going to be difficult for you to work in France after me,' she'd tell me." Breillat's actress In 2007, while in Los Angeles for a Teen Vogue cover shoot, she crossed paths with Gregg Araki. He offered her the role of a lesbian witch in Kaboom (2010). Then Josh Schwartz, the creator of the series Gossip Girl, offered her that of the princess of Monaco in season five (2011). "The liberated Frenchie, that's exotic for an American!" she said with a smile. At the same time, she appeared in the first American films by the French filmmaker Quentin Dupieux, notably Rubber (2010). "Breillat's actress" – the one who has most often worked with that director – no longer counts the films that make her get undressed: "Once I accept a role, I put myself at the service of the director, I don't see myself hindering his or her vision... And then, as Catherine [Breillat] would say, it's better to be a turn-on than a turn-off, right?" LIt's dangerous ground: Provocations don't sit well when the ongoing feminist revolution rightly calls out abuse. "It was a bad idea to joke about intimacy coaches [in charge of making sure sex scenes run smoothly] in front of a crowd of American journalists," admitted Mesquida. "I got lynched on Twitter [in 2019]. However, erotic scenes don't necessarily mean sexual violence, we musn't confuse everything." Now back in France, she recently presented A ma sœur at the Breillat retrospective at La Cinémathèque Française. "I'm finally starting to hear good things about her films," she said with relief. “This role helped me to experiment with my body as it was, and made me discover another side of myself ” Sabrina Seyvecou {Le quatrième} It's the story of Sandrine, a young leading lady who uses her charms to climb the social ladder... Admittedly, the script for Choses secrètes (Secret Things) contains a lot of sex scenes, but it would be silly to refuse, thought 18-year-old Sabrina Seyvecou, back in early 2001. It was a significant role; the director, Jean-Claude Brisseau (1944-2019), was skilled, worked with good technicians and shot with celluloid film. Moreover, he had achieved considerable success with Noce blanche (White Wedding, 1989), a fatal affair between a high school girl and a teacher, which blew her away. "What's more, I reminded him of young Paradis' [Vanessa Paradis, star of Noce blanche], , which was very flattering..." At the time, Seyvecou was unaware of the complaints of sexual harassment and embezzlement against the director, which had not yet been publicized. "At the time of filming, I was just out of my teens... Outside of high school, I spent a lot of time in sports clubs, doing volleyball, badminton, basketball, floor gymnastics, swimming, hip-hop dance," said the 41-year-old actress. "I was always in jogging bottoms and was a bit of a tomboy. With the role of Sandrine, cute, dolled up, wearing heels, what interested me was the composition process. It's completely illusory to think that a scene of nudity or eroticism can be shot naturally... In fact, that's why such scenes often go wrong in films. This work helped me to experiment with my body as it was, and led me to discover another side of myself related to sensuality, seduction, pleasure... Today, I realize how little deconstructed my view of women was, conditioned by our society's 'male gaze'."

The poster of "Choses secrètes (2002)", by Jean-Claude Brisseau, with Coralie Revel (left) and Sabrina Seyvecou. RONALDGRANT/MARY EVANS/SIPA

When the film was released in October 2002, the budding actress saw nothing but positives: Shortlisted for the César for Best Female Newcomer, she went from "no one" to "someone," and made a name for herself in the industry. A journalist écrit Les Cahiers du cinéma wrote in his top 10 best films: "1.Choses secrètes 2. Sabrina Seyvecou!" The magazine illustrated its special sex issue with an image taken from the film: "When I saw my face in total ecstasy on the cover, my first instinct was to flip the magazine to the bottom of the stack at the newsstand. Then I ended up thinking it was still validating to be on the cover of Les Cahiers du cinéma, which I regularly read. I had just started at Paris-III [university], where I was studying literature and cinema." Most rewarding professional experience Subsequently, a number of auteur filmmakers (such as Jean-Paul Civeyrac, Bertrand Bonello, Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu), impressed by Brisseau's films, hired the young actress. "That's not to say they wanted to get me naked at all costs. I remember that Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau were more interested in the handsome Yannick Renier's physique than in mine during the filming of a love scene [in L’Arbre et la Forêt [Family Tree], 2010]… which suited me just fine! Then I worked with director Rachid Bouchareb in Hors-la-loi [Outside the Law, 2010]. He was extremely modest, and I could sense his discomfort at the idea of filming the kissing scene between my character and Sami Bouajila's. I recall he always found an excuse to interrupt the scene before any lip contact." At the end of 2005, when Brisseau was summoned to court on charges of sexual harassment and embezzling two actresses to whom he had promised a starring role in Choses secrètes, Seyvecou found herself in a delicate situation. On the one hand, a police officer was urging her to make incriminating statements; on the other, she was being asked to support the filmmaker. At the same time, a newspaper confused matters: "There was that photo again, taken from the film, of my ecstatic face to illustrate an article titled 'Woman accuses Brisseau'." Today, Seyvecou reflects on how she was "very lucky not to have gone through what so many other actresses have endured." What's more, Choses secrètes remains her most rewarding professional experience. "After its release in France, I was lucky enough to accompany the film to festivals all over the world. During these promotional trips, the interviews didn't necessarily focus on the film's controversial nature. I felt like my work was being taken seriously. That's what encouraged me to continue acting," she said. "But you have to admit, it's not easy when you debut in a controversial film. Especially as actresses are constantly subject to the judgment of others." Text: Maroussia Dubreuil Editorial oversight: Clara Georges Editing: Guillemette Echalier Iconography: Lucy Conticello Design and developpement: Solène Reveney and Thomas Steffen

Fact-checking Bill Adairs Politifact: YOU LIE!

Politifact, the factchecking company, made itself a laughing stock when it selected "Republicans want to end Medicare" as Lie of the Year.
When the internet nearly universally despised them, they themselves admit they received 1500 emails on this, nearly all of them negative, they decided to use the old Echo Chamber defense http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2011/dec/22/fact-checking-echo-chamber-nation/, in which they mae the peculiar statement that:
"We made no judgments on the merits of the Ryan plan; we just said that the characterization by the Democrats was false."

WHAT????

Sooooo, you don't know whether Ryan's plan would actually end Medicare, but Democrats who claim such, are wrong anyway?

Wow.

Whats more, their defense to this is not an actual defense, it's the typical, cowardice, independents position: Echo chamber!?!? REALLY?? They say:
"And yet, for many of our readers, the love for PolitiFact has always been conditional. They love us when we confirm their views that the other side is wrong and they hate us when we don't."

Wow, they really make the huge mistake of interpreting what people think! Are they mind readers?
Maybe some on the left would not totally disagree with them on this, but to pick it as Lie of the year, is egregious.

They say that they've looked into all the criticism, and that you can go fuck yourselves, they're still right, neh neh nuh neh neh.
And to their discredit, they don't actually have an argument as to WHY "Repubs ending medicare" is such a false claim. They arrogantly claim they are right, and that's final.

Oh well.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2011/dec/22/fact-checking-echo-chamber-nation/


Factchecking PolitiFact itself.

1.
They give Romney 20 "True" statements, 3 of which are about the exact same thing: how mccain switched on taxes for the rich. So that one could go down to 18.

They also rate Romney's claim about how Obama increased the debt more than the previous 43 presidents combined as Mostly True, because 2 out of 3 measurements on that debt say that.
The kicker? those 2 measurements are about either a LONGER period, or one which Obama wasn't actually influencing the deficit.
End of fiscal 2008 - end of fiscal 2012
Obama inauguration - end of fiscal 2013
The fairest measure would be:
end of fiscal 2009 - end of fiscal 2013
in which Obama's deficit is NOT more than the previous three combined, by their own admission.

So, I rate PolitiFarts claim as Mostly False

2.
Their rating of Huntsmans claim that the US spends more on defense than the rest of the world as Mostly False. To be sure, it's not MORE, since that would mean that the USA spends more than 50 percent of global defense expenditure. Instead it's 40-45 percent, with a big unknown in what China and Russia spend.
I wouldn't have rated it as MOSTLY false, but a mere Half True would have done it, because Huntsman is almost right 45 % is really close to 50 percent.


My comment on the Weekly Standard:
In your criticism of Cohn, you're using a classic fallacy, called the non-sequitur.
he says:
"But Politfact and its counterpart, Factcheck.org, are prone to certain errors. Among them is a tendency to confuse statements of opinion, or interpretation, for statements of fact."

you respond:
"If the problem is, as Cohn acknowledges, PolitiFact tends to portray what's obviously opinion as fact, doesn't the notion that they single out Republicans as "lying" much more often suggest that they're just disagreeing with Republican opinions a lot more than Democratic ones? How is that not bias?"

Cohn does not say that EVERYTHING that politifact states is prone to this error. So, PF could be doing both, talk about facts, and mistake some opinions for fact.

I'm not sure I'd do away with factcheckers, they often source their statements quite well, and not with bloggers as you suggest elsewhere.

If three-quarters of their Pants-on-fire lies are made by Republicans, and you think that is because of selection bias, feel free to give them as much Democratic statements as you wish. I'm sure there's money to made from an effort like that, sure that someone somewhere would pay senior citizens a bunch of money to flood the Politifact website with tons of Democratic statements they think are lies.

Or is it the case that your and the rightwings innate, kneejerk assumption that ALL media is liberally biased, makes you not even try that?

Are you gonna vote against Obama because ...?

Click here for Poll! "Are you gonna vote against Obama because ...?"