Stone’s Silly Catholicism Post Becomes Chicago Tribune Op-Ed
If I write a silly blog post, can I have it made into an op-ed at a major newspaper?
I guess I could . . . if I were a law professor.
As it is, I’m a mere lawyer (one sometimes mistaken for a non-lawyer by law professors who publish op-eds based on silly blog posts), so I’m relegated to pointing out the worst flaws in the silly blog posts before they make it into the newspaper.
You’d think I might at least get a mention at the end, for having helped to edit out the falsehoods before the piece was ever submitted.
Can’t we find something new to talk about?
AF (d700ef) — 4/30/2007 @ 6:05 pmSix minutes from post to off-topic comment.
Patterico (5b0b7f) — 4/30/2007 @ 6:13 pmTo more important topic…
AF (d700ef) — 4/30/2007 @ 6:50 pmJust doing my job.
This is an important topic. The title of this post says Stone is “silly,” but this kind of thing is really very dangerous and insidious. See here.
Andrew (08ba2c) — 4/30/2007 @ 8:14 pmNow, now. AF was doing his job, which is to ham-fistedly work to change the subject whenever he doesn’t like what’s on tap. And since pointing out Prof. Stone’s conspiracy-mongering and bald-faced Catholophobia doesn’t fill AF with the warm fuzzies, that’s obviously a priority.
PCachu (e072b7) — 5/1/2007 @ 5:33 amThis one pisses me off. Professor Stone’s article was thoroughly discredited, on the University’s own blog, and has been for a couple of weeks now. So, naturally, the proper thing for the Chicago Tribune to do is to publish it in the newspaper, where negative responses to it can be completely controlled by the editors.
One of the greatest things about the internet is that it has removed the ability of the “gatekeepers” to control, restrict or just plain quash dissent — and that’s why Professor Stone’s original got hammered, because critics had the means to do so.
The editors of the Tribune had to have seen the criticism — but wanted to publish it in a venue in which it could influence people who won’t see the criticism of others, and who are restricted in their ability to respond.
Dana (3e4784) — 5/1/2007 @ 6:07 amWhen I was a National Merit Scholar at a Chicago Catholic high school in 1956, a school counselor and Christian Brother refused to write a letter of recommendation to the University of Chicago on the grounds that it was anti-Catholic. I guess he was right. I went somewhere else anyway.
Mike K (6d4fc3) — 5/1/2007 @ 10:58 amGee, you’d think a Roe supporter wouldn’t try that particular argument.
Kevin Murphy (805c5b) — 5/1/2007 @ 11:05 amWell, this is pretty funny
AF (d700ef) — 5/1/2007 @ 2:02 pmThis one pisses me off. Professor Stone’s article was thoroughly discredited, on the University’s own blog, and has been for a couple of weeks now. So, naturally, the proper thing for the Chicago Tribune to do is to publish it in the newspaper, where negative responses to it can be completely controlled by the editors.
It’s a pattern of dealing with inconvenient facts leaking out of non-MSM sources I am seeing more and more:
1. Leftist journalist/editorialist writes/says something patently false;
2. MSM promotes the falsehood;
3. Conservative blogosphere investigates and disproves false statements;
4. MSM bides its time as unchecked false statements continue to spread;
5. Conservative blogosphere forcefully challenges MSM to admit error;
6. After another controversy puts falsehoods on back burner, MSM grudgingly report that an alternative point-of-view exists, and all but dismissively says, “It’s just them.”
The MSM still hasn’t had the courage to admit that Joseph Wilson did NOT “debunk” or “discredit” CIA intelligence claims Iraq was seeking yellowcake uranium in Niger. As for challenging Valerie Plame’s newly minted tale of some passerby being responsible for suggesting Wilson for the Niger trip, the MSM are predictably incurious — it would have to admit that there was a reason for believing Plame had a role in the mission in the first place, which the great majority of news outlets took great pains to conceal.
L.N. Smithee (b048eb) — 5/1/2007 @ 5:13 pmMight as well put this up here:
Marty Lederman has some comments and observations
AF (4a3fa6) — 6/4/2007 @ 10:07 am