L.A. Times Readers’ Representative Jamie Gold writes me to say that the paper will be issuing a correction of its editorial which falsely claimed that James Dobson had called SpongeBob SquarePants gay.

Kudos to the paper for doing this. Too bad they are rejecting my equally valid complaint regarding the “imminent threat” canard.

It will be interesting to see how they word this. I can confidently predict that the correction will not say that the paper predicated an entire sarcastic editorial on the remarks falsely attributed to Dobson.

UPDATE: Title edited to make the lawyers happy.

Regular readers will recall that I recently wrote the L.A. Times to complain about an editorial which made the following false statement:

[C]ontrary to what Bush said in a previous State of the Union speech, we now know the threat posed by Hussein was not imminent.

In a letter to the “Readers’ Representative,” I noted that Bush had in fact argued in his 2003 State of the Union address that the threat posed by Iraq was not imminent:

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.

The “Readers’ Representative” now writes me to tell me that there will be no correction — because the mistake is “not correctable”:

Re your note on the Feb. 3 editorial: Though editors do take the complaint seriously, it is not correctable. As editors put it, there are few articles or editorials that couldn’t have found a better or perfect word to express a point, and this may be such a case. But the editorial did not quote the president.

You clearly disagree with their interpretation of what was expressed in the 2003 State of the Union speech, so perhaps your point could be made in a letter to the editor. Those editors won’t print letters that claim factual errors but they do consider airing viewpoints that differ with what’s printed on those pages.

Jamie Gold
Readers’ Representative

As I read this, the position of the editors is that, as long as you don’t directly quote someone, you can claim that they said the exact opposite of what they actually said, and no correction is necessary. Just write it off to bad wording, the impossibility of issuing a correction, or a different interpretation . . . take your pick of these various inconsistent and unconvincing excuses. The bottom line is that they’re deliberately choosing to let this particular misrepresentation stand.

And they wonder why people don’t trust them.

P.S. I had better luck with my complaint about the paper’s slander of James Dobson.

The Washington Times has the details here. A transcript of their interview with Specter is here.

Let’s hope this is just rhetoric designed to put pressure on Democrats. But I am not encouraged, especially by this snippet from the interview:

Q. You really don’t want to have to do the “nuclear option” (a rules change to limit filibusters of judicial nominees)?
A. Reid has been very explicit. His language is he’s going to screw things up. And he can. You don’t have to be a leader of 44 Democrats to screw things up. Only one senator can throw the monkey wrench in. I think it’s very much in the interest of the president and the Senate if we can try to work through it.
Q. If that doesn’t work, would you support the nuclear option?
A. I’m not going to jump off that bridge until I come to it and I hope I dont’ come to it.
Q. Do you have the votes for it?
A. You’d have to check with somebody at a higher paygrade.

Someone needs to tell Arlen that there are those ready to push him off that bridge, and install someone with a higher pay grade, who actually knows whether he can do the most important job facing the Judiciary Committee.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: what a buffoon.

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