The New York Times And An Outright Lie
This is, as Patterico says, an absolute jaw-dropper. This is not a distortion. This is not using slanted or loaded language. This is not selective reporting of only the facts you want out there. This is not even creative editing of a quote to make it say something completely different from what it actually said. No, the Times does all of those things routinely.
What makes this piece so outrageous is that it flat-out lies about what Kerry said.
That’s right. I’ll repeat it, because it’s so jaw-dropping: in the piece linked above, the New York Times tells a straight lie about the actual content of Kerry’s remarks.
Once Zernike finally gets around to discussing what Kerry actually said, she claims:
Mr. Kerry’s prepared remarks to California students on Monday called for him to say, “Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.” In his delivery, he dropped the word “us.”
Really? He said “Just ask President Bush”?
Zernike is claiming that Kerry said:
Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.
Only that’s not even remotely what he said. If it were, then we wouldn’t be having this debate. The inclusion of “Just ask President Bush” — if Kerry had actually spoken that line — would have made it a no-brainer that Kerry meant this as an anti-Bush joke. An absolute no-brainer.
But that’s not what Kerry said. Here is what he did say:
You know, education — if you make the most of it, you study hard and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.
Period. Full stop.
The New York Times has jumped the shark on this one. Either it fires the reporter and the editor that let this through, or they actually earn themselves negative credibility. In other words, if the Times prints it, assume it is a lie.
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The Code Cave — November 2, 2006 @ 2:02 pm
By TC@LeatherPenguin, November 2, 2006 @ 11:46 am
The Old Gray Hag jumped when they decided “classified” equates: doesn’t mean diddly to us with a Repub in the White House.”