I blame it all on the Washington Times, British Telecom, and the Old Speckled Hen
QuasiPundit is right. I need to be a little more skeptical about the Washington Times. (It's cold and dark here in Hobbiton-- and we gets our news where we may, don't we Precious? Our internet connections is so... slow and undependable, Precious... and no Newsweekses anywhere...)
Yesterday I reported, based on a TWT "summary" of a Howard Fineman Newsweek piece, that the Democratic Party had announced plans to commit suicide by adopting a campaign strategy of equating the Republicans with the Taleban. Now, duly chastened by QuasiPundit's scrupulous fact-checking of my ass, I have read Fineman's original piece, and I realize that this account was indeed rather slanted. "It's the last graf of eight," writes Tony Adragna, "in a column covering a range of issues, and the essential comparison need not be so... for TWT to spin Fineman's thread into something that looks like "Demonizing Christians" is objectionable."
Quite right. Despite the lack of proportion, though, for what it's worth, this paragraph isn't framed as Fineman's own prediction; he doesn't indicate a source, but he does actually say that "Democrats are planning" this new culture war. And it would be an idiotic, alienating move, except maybe in places like Berkeley where they're going to win anyway. I happen to agree, though, that even the Democrats probably wouldn't be stupid enough to try to run on an "at least we're not as bad as the Taleban" platform, much as TWT would like that to be the case. Most likely, they will focus on giving Congressional Republicans enough rope with which to hang themselves, which seems to work relatively well practically every time.
In any case, I must now amend my report as follows: Newsweek's Howard Fineman has revealed that the Democratic Party is weighing several options, including daring plans for a possible public mass suicide during the 2002 election.
Cheers to QuasiPundit for helping to keep the Blogs of War honest. Gollum.
Posted by Dr. Frank at January 3, 2002 03:58 AM | TrackBack