If you’ve been following the tale of The Washington Times’ John McCaslin, we have an update. (If you haven’t, read the first item here, and our first update to it here)
McCaslin has now attempted to clarify his previous Correction (which was full of lies) to his original story (which was full of lies) by posting another “Correction” (of a sort) which proceeds to make the case still worse.
Why is it so hard for Republicans to simply say “I made a mistake”? Ya know, kinda the way that awful Dan Rather was able to do when he found problems in his report on the National Guard memos? The wingnuts, of course, continue to insist Rather should resign for his honest mistake while completely ignoring McCaslin/Washington Times’ blatant and purposeful lies to smear Kerry. What else is new?
Today McCaslin continues to obfuscate and justify in a story that begins this way:
“We know we can’t count on the French. We know we can’t count on the Russians.”
Not the words of Sen. John Kerry, as a press release from the office of Rep. Peter T. King, New York Republican, incorrectly stated — and as we passed along in this column last Friday.
The congressman was paraphrasing Mr. Kerry’s sentiments on Iraq in a debate on CNN’s “Crossfire” in 1997.
He then spends the rest of the ink explaining that somehow the quote he made up that was given to him by King was not really so wrong because John Kerry probably felt that way even if he said something completely different at the time.
McCaslin never bothers to mention in his latest waffle — which manages to out-Clinton even Clinton himself — that in his original story which quoted Kerry saying that and more (all made up), that he’d admitted to having an actual video tape of the show he was “quoting” from. Apparently he didn’t either bother to watch it before quoting from it, or he simply watched and decided to make up whatever he wanted anyway since he erroneously said that “no ‘Crossfire’ transcripts from 1997 are available”. I guess that’s what he was hoping.
So for a second day in a row now, McCaslin is blaming Peter King for his own triumphant journalistic failure or outright lie that he’d hoped he wouldn’t get busted for.
As we pointed out, the original lie was picked up and run on Drudge (the #1 Website in the world) and dutifully spread from there by the rest of the Attack Monkey Media for at least 24 hours. Drudge has not bothered to run any of the “Corrections”. Damage done. Mission still Accomplished.
John McCaslin – jmccaslin@washingtontimes.com (202) 636-3284
Mng. Editor, Francis B. Coombs Jr. – fcoombs@washingtontimes.com
Washington Times – (202) 636-3000
Brad,
You are absolutely right. McCaslin should resign.
I still think Rather should, as well. 🙂
I was wrooooo….
I was wronkkk…
Nope can’t say it
Teddy, as always, your intellectual honesty is appreciated. I hope you’ll take the time to drop them a note or make a call.
As to Rather, I wouldn’t mind if he resigned, but only because he’s so terribly dull.
That said, there seems to be no indication that – like McCaslin – he purposely lied. It was undoubtedly shoddy journalism on Rather’s part, but given the extraordinary amount of journalism in this country that is much worse and has lead to much more graver outcomes (Hello? Judith Miller? New York Times? Anyone? Bueller?…) and the number of outright lies and distortions by so many others (Fox, ABC, Wash Times etc.) the Rather thing is nothing but silly, tunnel-visioned, wingnut opportunism. As Rush would say, "plain and simple."