George Will had a column in today’s WashPost, suggesting that incoming Virginia Senator Jim Webb may have been indecorous to President Bush during a courtesy meeting with incoming Congresspersons. However, Will’s characterization of the exchange omitted some words, leading to this post from Greg Sargent:
This is one of the rankest displays of journalistic dishonesty I've seen in some time. In today's Washington Post column, George Will assails Dem Senator-elect Jim Webb over his now-well-known confrontation with President Bush at a White House reception. To do so, Will badly distorts the reporting his own paper did on the episode, and it's quite clear his distortions were entirely deliberate.Emphasis added. Wow, take a breath junior. It was worse than Dan Rather’s “fake but accurate” TANG memos, or CNN’s soft-pedal of Saddam Hussein’s regime, or the NY Times' Abu Gharib whiff? C’mon already. In fact, I’m tempted to say that this post was the worst thing ever written in the history of the English language and – why not? – the author is worse than Hitler.
5 comments:
George Will calling anyone "a pompous poseur" is like Lindsay Lohan calling someone a ditz.
That's true, and I wanted to expand on how silly Will's vapor attack was, but dinner was on the table.
So, how did it taste?
I'm confused... I was assured by Fox News that the Democratic sweep wasn't that big a victory. Because they only won because of candidates like Jim Webb, who were really conservatives. Doesn't Jim Webb know that?
Eleanor Clift on the Webb-Bush meeting:
Every so often a politician comes along who doesn’t pander to the president. Fresh off a nasty campaign that centered on the war in Iraq, Virginia Senator-elect Jim Webb had no interest in a picture of himself with President Bush, and he didn’t want to exchange small talk with the man whose war policies he opposes. So he skipped the receiving line at a White House reception for newly elected members of Congress, creating the first of what we should all hope will be many ripples in Washington.
Symbols matter. Bush certainly understands their importance, or he wouldn’t have jetted onto that carrier in a flight suit and stood in front of a banner that proclaimed MISSION ACCOMPLISHED more than a thousand days and thousands more deaths ago. A president snubbed by a junior senator-elect and then, more tellingly by the puppet prime minister in Iraq, should be wondering where he went wrong, not the other way around.
It’s justice long overdue for a president who has so abused the symbols of war to get his comeuppance from a battlefield hero who personifies real toughness as opposed to fake toughness. Bush struts around with this bullying frat-boy attitude, and he gets away with it because nobody stands up to him. Bush could have left Webb’s initial response stand, but no, he had to jab back—“That’s not what I asked you.” Webb is not one to be bullied.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15990689/site/newsweek/
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