Two words: so what? Fox issued a correction and an apology. Quickly. Consequently, I feel no compulsion to explore this story any further. I’m not Switzerland, after all.
Bottom line: Fox screwed up, caught the mistake, corrected it, chastised Cameron, and apologized. End of story.
Let Josh Marshall try flogging this limp joint until it stiffens. But I for one ain’t gonna help him out by telling him he looks “totally hot” when he’s righteously indignant. Metaphorically speaking.
They goofed.
They ‘fessed up and made it right.
Sounds good to me. Did I miss something?
What’s to flog??
Oh, and I *assume*
good ol’ Josh is asking the same sorts of questions about Rather & Hailey.
Anyone?
Anyone?
Beuller??
So, Carl Cameron accused John Kerry of getting a manicure? Yeah, that’s just as bad as Rather passing off fake memos that accuse Bush of shirking his military duties.
I’m pretty sure that Joshua McCartney Marshall is floging himself over this one.
Flogging. Heh.
The image of Josh Marshall flogging himself makes me sympathize with this guy. Uh, even more than I did on the other thread, in fact. Which I did. A lot.
mmmmGLAVin!
You know Rove is behind this somehow.
More seriously: one of the better books I read in 2001 was Frank Bruni’s Ambling Into History. Bruni was the New York Times reporter assigned to cover the Bush campaign. He wrote a fairly hilarious travelogue about the whole experience, and it was a real insight into the whole world of following political campaigns. Reporters travelling constantly, away from home for months, cramped together on campaign buses or planes, living in a weird bubble outside the rest of the world. Eventually people got punchy and silly. Very interesting read.
The reason I bring it up is I was reminded me of an incident Bruni described of how bored press pool reporters, weary after endless campaigning, worked up a bogus, mock memo from the Bush people, referring to Bush as “fearless leader” and putting a bunch of stupid bogus quotes in his mouth. It got circulated in the press pool, everyone laughed, and then the Bushies saw it and got pissed, although they didn’t make a big stink about it.
Looks to me like that’s all this reallyl was, and Cameron goofed and emailed it to the wrong people, or without the appropriate disclaimers, and their web gnomes just put it up unthinkingly.
You’d think a quick retraction, apology, and disciplinary action would be enough.
I wonder if Cameron is going to run a full television segment based on those quotes. I wonder if he’s going to demand that Kerry answer the questions those quotes pose. I wonder if Cameron still thinks those quotes are real. I wonder if he’ll call them fake but accurate.
Marshall’s analogy:
Pretty.
Damn.
Thin.
I wonder just how stupid anyone would have to be to actually believe those quotes are real.
If they did believe them, either on the left or right, they probably don’t have the mental capacity to make a well-informed vote.
What’s even worse is those on the left and right who feel the need to “look into this more and analyze it fairly.”
It’s obvious what happened. There is no more there there.
I thought the important thing wasn’t whether the quotes are real, but the questions they raise.
Fake, but accurate. Anyone?
What likely happened is Cameron wrote the skelaton of a story, planning to fill in with real quotes before submitting it for publication, the wrong version was sent, and as said above, “their web gnomes just put it up unthinkingly.” Cameron can’t possibly have expected this to get out and be believed.
The point JMM is trying to make is that even having written something like this shows Cameron doesn’t like Kerry, which is probably true. He’s spent a lot of time around the man, and most Americans find they like Kerry less the more they see of him. Does this show up as biased reporting? Maybe, but since the left’s been arguing for years that political preference does not show up in reporting, they’re not up to the task of selling this.
Cameron should personally apologize. That would be the stand-up thing to do. Then, for another Ferris Bueller’s Day Off quote, “Let my Cameron go.”