Patterico's Pontifications

1/5/2008

Nostalgia at the Washington Post

Filed under: 2008 Election,General,Humor,Morons — Patterico @ 9:01 pm



The Washington Post said tonight’s debate was between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Powerline has the screengrab.

They corrected it, though. After the correction, it said that it was between Bill Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama. Tully has the screengrab.

Helen Thomas: Bloggers Don’t Have the Standards and Ethics of Big Media Reporters

Filed under: Dog Trainer,General — Patterico @ 5:54 pm



This is almost too good. It’s the standard Big Media snobbishness about bloggers — coming in a quote from one of bloggers’ biggest punching bags, Helen Thomas:

“What I really worry about is that I think the bloggers and everyone, everyone with a laptop thinks they’re journalists,” Thomas said. “And, they certainly don’t have our standards. They don’t have our ethics, and so forth. There’s a deterioration.”

“[T]hey certainly don’t have our standards. They don’t have our ethics . . .” Well, she’s right about that.

Here’s one example.

On January 2, crab-grass blogger Dan Riehl wrote a post about a wide array of media outlets that got taken in by a phony Facebook entry for Bilawal Bhutto.

On January 3 — the next day — the L.A. Times‘s Rosa Brooks published a column that quoted the phony entry:

And who knows? Maybe Bilawal’s not such a bad choice for the Pakistan People’s Party. A history student at Oxford, he already has a constituency — at least on Facebook, where someone has established a new fan group called “Let’s not assassinate Bilawal Bhutto because he’s hot, OK?” Bilawal’s own Facebook profile is fairly modest: “I am not a politician or a great thinker. I’m merely a student. I do the things that students do like make mistakes, eat junk food … but most importantly of all … learn.” Still, “My time to lead will come.”

The L.A. Times has since issued a “For the Record” item that states:

Pakistan: Rosa Brooks’ Thursday column about political dynasties cited a quote from Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s Facebook profile. Facebook has since found the entries to be “not authentic” and disabled them.

This papers over the fact that the writing was on the wall the night before Brooks’s column ran. At 7:59 p.m., a New York Times blog quoted a Facebook associate warning that the account had been set up by someone else — and blogger Riehl had picked up on it by 11:03 p.m. But dinosaur Big Media columnist Brooks still had a column printed the next day quoting the phony entry.

If Rosa Brooks had bloggers’ standards, I guess the L.A. Times wouldn’t have had to issue that correction.

But Helen Thomas is right. We don’t have their standards.

(Via Michelle.)

Did Romney Campaign Float Rumor of Thompson’s Impending Withdrawal?

Filed under: 2008 Election — Patterico @ 5:34 pm



According to Bob Novak, rumors that Thompson would withdraw after Iowa and endorse John McCain “have been traced in part to Mitt Romney’s campaign, trying to stir up strife between McCain and Thompson.”

Debate Open Thread

Filed under: 2008 Election — Patterico @ 4:14 pm



I can’t watch now because it costs extra to have “ABCE” — the East Coast version of ABC. So I’ll have wait until 7. No reason you guys can’t comment now, though.

UPDATE: Yes, I can watch. Via Michelle Malkin is streaming video, here.

UPDATE x2: OK, here’s fact question #1: has Mitt supported a timed withdrawal from Iraq or not? Huck says yes, Mitt says no.

UPDATE x3: John McCain just claimed — again! — that he has never supported amnesty. And he cites Joementum’s recent endorsement of that falsehood as authority for that statement. Gibson is too clueless to confront him with the quote that proves him wrong:

McCain himself embraced the term during a news conference a few years ago in his office in Tucson, Ariz. “McCain Pushes Amnesty, Guest-Worker Program,” reported the Tucson Citizen of May 29, 2003. The senator is quoted as saying: “Amnesty has to be an important part because there are people who have lived in this country for 20, 30 or 40 years, who have raised children here and pay taxes here and are not citizens. That has to be a component of it.” The newspaper also quoted McCain as saying: “I think we can set up a program where amnesty is extended to a certain number of people who are eligible and at the same time make sure that we have some control over people who come in and out of this country.”

McCain needs to get clubbed over the head for saying this.

UPDATE x4: According to K-Lo, Team Romney has found a quote from Huckabee that undercuts his claim tonight that he supported the surge. Here’s the video:

Bill Clinton: Begging the Press to Revisit Hillary’s Old Scandals

Filed under: 2008 Election — Patterico @ 2:38 pm



Bill Clinton, in full whine mode, says Hillary has been “totally exonerated of every single charge ever leveled” at her. I question this assertion at Hot Air.

DRJ — Gone!

Filed under: Blogging Matters,General — Patterico @ 1:45 pm



DRJ told me before my Christmas vacation that she needed to stop guest blogging. I prevailed on her to continue while I was out of town, and she kindly agreed. But despite a lot of whining, wailing, and gnashing of teeth on my part, I can’t get her to continue on a regular basis. I’m still hopeful that she’ll pop in from time to time — as often as she can possibly manage — when there is breaking news I can’t immediately cover, or new stories on topics that fall within her areas of expertise. Failing that, though, this place is going to revert to its previous, somewhat boring (and entirely sports-free) status. Sorry about that.

Olmsted’s Final Post

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 1:37 pm



Andrew Olmsted was killed in Iraq. His final post was published posthumously here.

He didn’t want his death to be politicized; the best way to do it is not to allow comments on this post. Leave his family a thoughtful and non-political message at the link.

More at Hot Air.

UPDATE: I don’t see any comments there, though the post has been up since last night. So I’m guessing they’re not allowing comments either.


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