The Times Rows Back: Maybe Conservatives Aren't So Hot On Bill-Raped-Hillary Book

After first publishing an article stating that conservatives were busy little bees promoting Ed Klein's anti-Hillary book -- despite the fact that, you know, we weren't, and even super-liberal hack Joe Conason noticed this (approvingly) -- the Times writes a follow-up story which partly corrects the original without acknowledging the original story was in error.

Now the Times tells us that the Klein book has "unexpected" critics, like Bill O'Reilly, Peggy Noonan, and the New York Post's John Podhoertz.

That this criticism is deemed "unexpected" says volumes about the Times. Apparently the Times is surprised that conservatives don't uncritically accept any anti-Clinton smear that floats by our collective transoms. Shockingly enough, we seem to discriminate between attacks on the Clintons which are plausible and supported by evidence and those which are implausible and supported only by annonymous single-sourcing.

It also says that the New York Times still doesn't bother reading what conservatives write. Had the author of the original piece read any conservative blogs, he would have seen what Joe Conason did, that reaction to the Drudge-hyped rape smear was almost uniformly negative among conservatives.

The Times spent a lot of ink trying to "understand" actual enemies of America and "why they hate us." Perhaps they can devote a tiny fraction of those reportial resources to the fringe extremists they call "conservatives" (better known as 43% of the American voting public), and perhaps form a fuller understanding of our strange mindsets and historical grievances.

Perhaps by treating us as full-fledged enemies of America -- explicitly; they already seem to treat us so implicitly -- their coverage of conservatives will become a bit more fair and accurate.

posted by Ace at 11:21 AM

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