I was traveling a lot during the past week, then returned to my backlogged domestic duties, and both kept me from this blog for far too long — apologies for the hiatus. Now for some catching up!
Soon, reports from Bloggercon and some other comments from my trip. But first, an amazing cavalcade of corrections.
Every news organization has to deal with a difficult or embarrassing correction every now and then; since everyone makes mistakes, the only alternative (pretend you never goofed) is unthinkable. But surely this season has been extraordinary.
We started shortly before the election with the Wall Street Journal’s act of postmodern performance-art journalism, in which the leading national conservative newspaper absolved the leading national conservative TV network of leaning Bush-ward: “NEWS CORP.’S Fox News was incorrectly described in a page-one article Monday as being sympathetic to the Bush cause.” Oh, right, thanks — you know, without the tip we just might have gotten that one wrong…
But the strange corrections keep coming. Here’s a couple of recent ones from the New York Times.
At the end of the most recent column by David Brooks came this timid confession: “Not that it will do him much good at this point, but I owe John Kerry an apology. I recently mischaracterized some comments he made to Larry King in December 2001. I said he had embraced the decision to use Afghans to hunt down Al Qaeda at Tora Bora. He did not. I regret the error.”
Unfortunately, the quote Brooks is now retracting formed the centerpiece of the columnist’s Oct. 30 piece; it was the key piece of evidence he cited as to “why Kerry is not cleaning Bush’s clock in this election.” Yeah, I guess it won’t do Kerry much good at this point. In this little craven act Brooks is simply working in line with the administration he supports, whose modus operandi routinely involves lying when it matters and letting the truth mop up when it no longer makes any difference.
But as we Bush opponents rightly push back on the distortions and outright lies that the crew in Washington have been peddling for four years, we need to take care that, in our anger and frustration, we don’t fall into some of the same practices.
For instance, take the matter of President Bush’s chief legal adviser, Alberto Gonzales, whose nomination to be Attorney General has raised hackles because of a memo (PDF) Gonzales wrote suggesting that the war on terrorism meant we could ignore aspects of the Geneva Conventions. Now, Gonzales wrote that memo, and no matter how you cut it it’s a fairly appalling document — one that can accurately be linked to the abuses and torture committed by American troops at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, crimes that Bush administration officials have amorally and shamefully refused to take any responsibility for. (In the Bush White House, the buck stops nowhere.)
Gonzales has plenty to answer for. But some critics (including Salon’s Joe Conason) have latched onto a single word that his memo uses to describe aspects of the Geneva Convention: “quaint.” Unfortunately, tarring Gonzales with that particular adjective appears to be unfair. If you read this correction from Friday’s Times, it’s clear that Gonzales used “quaint” only in the fairly narrow and reasonably defensible context of several trivial provisions that are not at the heart of this controversy:
“A front-page article yesterday about the nomination of Alberto R. Gonzales to be attorney general included an incomplete version of a quotation from a memo by Mr. Gonzales or his aides that his critics contend opened the door to the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. (Excerpts from Mr. Gonzales’s legal writings, published with the continuation of the article, included the complete quotation.) The passage, discussing the war on terrorism, read in full: “In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded such things as commissary privileges, scrip (i.e., advances of monthly pay), athletic uniforms and scientific instruments.” The version in the article yesterday was truncated after “some of its provisions.” |
Oppose Gonzales? Sure. But let’s leave the selective quotation, the context-free criticism and the misquotational smears to the GOP. They’re better at it, anyway.
BONUS LINKS: For those of you who are still burning the midnight oil with nightmares of electoral fraud and recount fever, I can only recommend the yeoman work of Salon’s Farhad Manjoo (here and here). Every potential election problem is worth looking into, and Salon will keep at it, but let’s face it, it is hugely unlikely that this election was stolen. (Guess what? The exit polls were off because exit polls are lousy. And this entire election was within the margin of error at all times.) The more energy we spend focusing vainly on pursuing the chimera of fraud, the less we have to fight real battles.
And to keep up one’s spirits in this dark hour, there’s always The Onion’s deadpan realism: “Nation’s Poor Win Election For Nation’s Rich.”
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