The New York Times’ Bizzare World
I know I am jumping on the bash the New York Times bandwagon rather late but this story is just too good to pass up. Take a look at this article and tell me it doesn’t capture the bizzaro world of the NYT.
First the headline:
In Ohio, Iraq Questions Shake Even Some of Bush’s Faithful
Ok, now with this headline you’re thinking that Republicans in Ohio are starting to doubt President Bush right? Well, let’s see what kind of damning quote the Times can dig up. Here is one shaken faithful:
“I’d like to know whether there was any deliberate attempt to deceive,” said Mr. Stock, 70, a retired public school administrator. “My feeling is there was not. But there was an eagerness in the administration to pursue the battle and to believe information that wasn’t quite good.”
Whoa! That sounds like trouble brewing to me. After all he would like to know what happened. Oh sure he doesn’t think there was any intentional deception but what about that reference to “information that wasn’t quite good” – pull on that string and it might lead anywhere! Let’s look at another faithful Bush backer and see how his faith has been shaken:
Mr. Kleeberger, 44, said he remains convinced that the invasion was a good thing, whether or not the president was wrong about Iraq’s nuclear weapons program. Eventually, he said, he believes prohibited weapons will be found in Iraq.
“It would take many more mistakes for me to question the credibility and decision-making of the government,” he said. “We’d like to think intelligence is 100 percent right 100 percent of the time. But it’s a human system and there’s human error.”
Doesn’t sound very shaken does he? In fact the article comes straight out and admits that the headline was just a trick to get you to read the article:
In conversations here with nearly three dozen voters, the vast majority said they generally like President Bush and believe he is doing a good job. Many people said they remained convinced that Iraq posed a threat, even though no chemical or biological weapons have been found. And there was a broad consensus that the result of the war ? the ousting of a brutal dictator ? was good for Iraq as well as the United States . . . Despite Democratic efforts to use the intelligence issue to undermine Mr. Bush’s credibility, most people interviewed here, including Democratic voters, said they did not think Mr. Bush had knowingly used bad intelligence. Most said they believed the president had been motivated by a sincere desire to counter what he considered a real threat.
I find it amazing that the Times can work so hard to create a sense of “trouble brewing” when practically everyone they interview supports Bush and the Iraq invasion. The headline simply doesn’t match the story – so why create the story in the first place? If you are attempting to drum up doubts about the President this is a pretty lame way to do it.
Good point. The problem is that so many people probably just read the headline and walk away thinking that people are really pissed because “Bush is lying”. That sort of group think pushes them to be pissed about it too, and that’s where we are now.
Get ready for the Instalanche.
Yeah, “lame” is about the best way to describe this. The entire “Bush lied” story is about the most reprehensible case of the media’s complicity in spinning a politically-motivated story out of whole cloth that I’ve ever seen.
Has anybody got a trademark on “Bush Lied” yet? I would stake that claim myself but I can’t get a trademark symbol out this keyboard.
I looked at the story and, like so many NYT stories these days, stopped reading after the first weak anecdote. They even had another one about the Augusta National golf club the other day. These guys don’t give up.
I looked at the story and, like so many NYT stories these days, stopped reading after the first weak anecdote. They even had another one about the Augusta National golf club the other day. These guys don’t give up.
To me, the excerpts you quote from the article have the condescending tone of the New York elite: “Those poor, benighted Midwesterners out there in the hinterlands who aren’t clued in to how deceptive our government really is. How quaint, they really trust and believe the Bush Administration.”
This is why I hardly ever read the former paper-of-record anymore. The attempt to spin everything the Bush admin does abroad as doomed to fail is so transparent as to be laughable.
Wishing that consummate pro Bill Keller will reverse this situation, but I don’t have much hope so long as his idiot trust fund hippie boss, the Sulzberger brat, remains in charge.
This is 4 days after the Times created a stir here in Ohio by sighting, “an unnamed source” in the African Studies Dept. that National Champion Ohio State football players all where receiving special treatment on class work. Now mind you the professor of the dept. went on the record to state that the claims of the unnamed source where false. In fact the entire resources of the Times could only find one person to make this claim and could not provide a single piece of evidence. A classic example of just running with any “deep throat” whistle blower you can find to manufacture a scandal.
And now they are making more stuff up about Ohio. I used to not respect the Times. Now I am starting to hate them.
A case of using a headline to promote the “mob mentality.”
Tongue Boy;
If your posting or writing on the web, just type ™ to get a trademark (™) symbol.
So I start reading the comments, and I’m like, “Huh? Why is ‘Annoying Old Guy’ explaining how to make a trademark symbol?”
So I scroll back up through the main post, looking and looking to see where a trademark symbol had been wanted — to figure out what exactly had spurred ‘Annoying Old Guy’ to offer an explanation. I was about to chalk it up to ‘Annoying Old Guy’ just being senile, and then…
…And then I realized, “Oh, it’s just another user-unfriendly blogger who has his comments backwards.”
A comments thread is like a continuing conversation — a conversation that begins after your post and carries on. It is only logical, then, to have comments running from oldest to newest, top to bottom. Running them in reverse is counterintuitive, and not very nice to readers.
If you are new online, which this discovery makes me suspect, then take this as a piece of helpful advice.
I have news for you: a neocon even hinting that something a republican president did doesn’t instantly qualify him for Mt. Rushmore, if not sainthood qualifies as trenchant criticism.