The View From 1776

In the article reproduced below, the Wall Street Journal‘s James Taranto recaps the hypocrisy and dishonesty of the liberal-progressive propaganda media.

Big Lies and Little Ones
Paul Krugman’s only example turns out to have been fraudulent.
By James Taranto

Yesterday we noted that Paul Krugman, the New York Times’s star columnist, had offered only one example to bolster his claim that “eliminationist rhetoric” is “coming, overwhelmingly, from the right.” To quote Krugman’s Monday column:

It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.

As we noted in yesterday’s column, in October then-Rep. Paul Kanjorski, a Pennsylvania Democrat, mused about assassinating a fellow politician. Not only was he not ostracized; he was rewarded with a spot yesterday on the op-ed page of Krugman’s newspaper.

But what about the Bachmann quote? We doubted whether these three words, presented without context, constituted “eliminationist rhetoric” as Krugman claimed they did. Our skepticism turned out to have been well founded.

In March 2009, the left-wing site ThinkProgress attempted to present Bachmann in an unfavorable light by using a longer version of this comment. Blogger Dave Evers nonetheless found the site guilty of “selective quoting” and made his case by presenting the quote in its full context. It’s not terribly interesting but is important to commit to the record. Here is what Bachmann said (Evers tells us that the ellipses reflect pauses, not omitted text):

But you can get all the latest information on this event, this . . . a must-go-to event with this Chris Horner. People will learn . . . it will be fascinating. We met with Chris Horner last week, 20 members of Congress. It takes a lot to wow members of Congress after a while. This wowed them. And I am going to have materials for people when they leave. I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing, and the people--we the people--are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States and that’s why I want everyone to come out and hear. So go to bachmann.house.gov and you can get all the information.

Now, if Krugman had said the words “armed and dangerous” were ill-chosen, we would have agreed. If he had said they were irresponsible, that would be a legitimate opinion, albeit one we would be inclined to discount as partisan.

But that is not what he said. Krugman, who recreationally burns politicians in effigy, described Bachmann’s comment as “eliminationist rhetoric.” That is flatly fraudulent.

If the broader claim--that the “rhetoric” of Republican politicians and the nonliberal media was to blame for last Saturday’s act of mass murder--is true, why can’t it be presented without false factual assertions? Krugman’s little lie undermines the big lie he and his newspaper are attempting to purvey.

Krugman and his colleagues on the Times editorial board are not skilled enough to be effective liars. That is far from the worst thing you can say about newspapermen. But when did the people who run the New York Times forget that their job--their duty--is to tell the truth?

Newsweek’s Political Obscenity


In the wake of the Tucson massacre, the indecent behavior of the formerly mainstream media has not been limited to the New York Times-led witch hunt against Republicans, conservatives and independent media voices. Equally appalling in its own way has been the rush by pundits to advise President Obama on how to make political hay out of the atrocity.

The worst example is a Monday article by Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter titled “Can Obama Turn Tragedy Into Triumph?” This passage will live in infamy:

Conservatives like to argue that these are isolated incidents carried out by lunatics and therefore carry no big lessons (unless the perpetrator is Muslim, in which case it’s terrorism); liberals view them as opportunities to address various social ills. Obama is in the latter category and should act accordingly. “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” Rahm Emanuel famously said in 2008. The same goes for a shooting spree that gravely wounds a beloved congresswoman.

To say that this is deeply cynical falls short of capturing what makes it so shocking. Dick Morris published a column Monday titled “There Are No Politics in Murder.” Morris is right, of course, but his sanctimony grates on anyone who remembers that he did not practice what he now preaches. As we noted Monday, Morris was the mastermind of Bill Clinton’s effort to capitalize politically on the Oklahoma City bombing.

But Morris is savvy enough to have some sense of decorum. He is trying to look like a decent man. Alter seems to be lacking in any sense of decency. What’s more, that isn’t even the creepiest passage from the Alter piece. Here is his conclusion:

Sad to say, if Giffords had died, she would have been mourned and soon the conversation would have moved on. But Giffords lives, thank God, which offers other possibilities. We won’t know for weeks or months whether she can function in public. If she can, she will prove a powerful referee of the boundaries of public discourse--more influential, perhaps, than the president himself.

A woman is in the hospital, gravely wounded in a brutal attack, and Alter is happy she is alive because he has an idea of how to put her to use furthering a political agenda. “Thank God” she lived, he says, because he has the rest of her life planned out for her. This is such an obscenity that Newsweek should be delivered in a plain brown wrapper.

Rahm Emanuel, a man known for petty indecencies, was asked yesterday about Alter’s gross one. FoxNews.com has the video of a stricken-looking Emanuel, now running for mayor of Chicago, delivering a well-earned refudiation of Alter: “First of all, what I said was: Never allow a good crisis to go to waste when it’s an opportunity to do things that you had never considered or that you didn’t think were possible. That’s not intended for this moment, or [sic] does it apply to this moment.”

For Rahm Emanuel, there are limits. Not so for Jonathan Alter--or, for that matter, for the editors at Newsweek who allowed these ghoulish sentiments to be published. This follows a pattern. Politicians of both parties and all ideological stripes have behaved far better than the liberal media in the aftermath of Saturday’s horror. (There are a few exceptions, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik being the most glaring.) Liberal journalism is being consumed by a moral rot. We cannot say the same about liberalism itself.

President Obama is expected to make his first extended remarks on the subject as part of a memorial service tonight at the University of Arizona. This will probably be the most carefully scrutinized speech he has ever delivered. If he is seen to be trying to use this atrocity for political purposes, it will damage the country and his presidency.

It may be that the monstrous behavior of Obama’s supposed supporters in the media has put him in a position where he has no choice but to behave decently, scrupulously avoiding the merest hint of political opportunism.

Here’s hoping.