Posted on 09/21/2005 7:23:18 PM PDT by strategofr
As regular readers know, the game is all about forcing Krugman to admit publicly that he lied in his August 19 Times column when he declared
the simple truth: Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election. Two different news media consortiums reviewed Floridas ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore.
In truth, the media recounts, which looked at what would have happened if the Florida supreme courts recount order had not been derailed by the U.S. Supreme Court, would have confirmed the win by George W. Bush under almost all recount methods. In other words, Krugmans statement was a full-fledged lie.
Of course, getting a correction out of Krugman is no easy matter. Hence, a chess game of epic proportions:
Move One: Intense and immediate pressure from throughout the blogosphere forced Krugman to clarify in his August 22 column that he had been referring only to a scenario of a full statewide manual recount (which, he didnt say, would have gone beyond the scope of anything ordered by the Florida supreme court or even requested by the Gore campaign). He noted that, in such a scenario, the consortium led by the Miami Herald would have given the election to Gore under two out of three recount methods.
Move Two: In this column on August 24, we pointed out that the Herald consortium had employed four, not three, methods for its full statewide manual recount scenario and that Gore had only won two out of four, not two out of three. Two days later, in his August 26 column, Krugman published an official correction sort of. He acknowledged that he had originally misstated the results of the 2000 Florida election study by failing to have said that the Herald had only found Gore winning under two out of three methods. This correction only perpetuated a lie the Herald had found Gore winning only under two out of four methods thus it had not, on balance, found him winning at all.
Move Three: In this column on August 31, we proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Herald had, indeed, found Gore the winner only under two out of four methods having obtained direct testimony from Mark Seibel, the managing editor who spearheaded the Heralds recount project in 2001. Three days later, on the morning of September 2, New York Times public editor Byron Calame posted an entry to his web journal urging Krugman to correct his two out of three error. Later that day, Krugman posted a correction on the Times website, in the area devoted to letters to the editor.
Move Four: In this column on September 13, we blasted Krugman, Calame, and Times editorial page editor Gail Collins for not making Krugmans correction official. We noted that it had never appeared in the Timess print edition, was not appended to a Krugman column (as called for under Collinss official columnist corrections policy), and appears nowhere in the Times website search engine or any of the public periodical databases such as Lexis/Nexis, ProQuest, or Factiva. Its the correction that never was straight down the memory hole. Three days later, on September 16, Calame posted on his web journal a stinging rebuke to Krugman and Collins calling Krugmans web posting a faux correction, complaining that Ms. Collins hasnt offered any explanation, and asking, Does a corrections policy not enforced damage The Timess credibility more than having no policy at all?
Move Five: This column, today. We once again challenge Krugman and Collins to make the correction official. The facts are not in question. Krugman admitted his error in his web posting so why not commit it to print, and to the searchable archives, so that generations of future researchers utilizing the newspaper of record wont be misled? And if Krugman and Collins wont do it, then we challenge Calame to document the correction himself and the dysfunctional process under which it was not made official in his Sunday column in the print edition of the Times, not just his web journal.
Why is it important to go to so much trouble to correct one lie? First, because Paul Krugman and the Times are tremendously influential and prestigious, and unless their lies are corrected they will live in the public discourse and the history books as truths. And second, by teaching Krugman that he will have to bear the public humiliation of correcting his lies, his columns in the future will have to be based only on truth. And that will make it a lot harder for him to advance his loony Angry Left agenda an agenda that doesnt have much truth underpinning it.
In the future, Krugmans columns would be like Mondays baseless jeremiads consisting of nothing but the authors crazy and hateful personal opinions. In his Monday column, Krugman advanced the paranoid theory that the entire political movement in America toward limited government is based on not on helping the needy, which in turn is based on racism. As Krugman put it,
race is the biggest reason the United States, uniquely among advanced countries, is ruled by a political movement that is hostile to the idea of helping citizens in need. ... race-based hostility to the idea of helping the poor created an environment in which a political movement hostile to government aid in general could flourish.
Just what race is Krugman talking about? According to the Census Bureau, in 2004 there were 25.3 million white people living below the poverty line, but only 9 million black people. Krugman continued,
in the United States, unlike any other advanced country, many people fail to receive basic health care because they cant afford it. Lack of health insurance kills many more Americans each year than Katrina and 9/11 combined. But the health care crisis hasnt had much effect on politics. And one reason is that it isnt yet a crisis among middle-class, white Americans (although its getting there). Instead, the worst effects are falling on the poor and black
Oh yeah? According to the Census Bureau, in 2004 there were 21.4 million white people without health insurance, and only 7.2 million blacks. If all those purported racists in favor of smaller government are out to screw black people, it seems theyre willing to screw an awful a lot of white people in the process. Talk about collateral damage!
Krugman is certainly entitled to his opinions, no matter how paranoid and no matter how unsupported by facts they may be. But hes not entitled to lie about the facts. And when he cant do that, his opinions dont carry much weight.
And thats why were keeping the pressure on Krugman and the Times and bravo to Byron Calame for following our lead. Maybe after a couple more moves in this chess game we wont have to call Paul Krugman Americas most dangerous liberal pundit anymore. Hell just be Americas looniest.
Nobody to the right of MoveOn.org really believes the NY Times, do they?
Well, have at it. But don't expect anything. Check out this article about the letters I sent regarding the Air America fiasco.
Basically, Calame reported that yes, they did a bad job on the story, but 1) he did it in his BLOG, not in the paper, and 2) the editor write to me and said "Calame already covered it", and 3) It never did appear in the NYT.
It's the perception problem a perception of liberal bias for which I haven't found any evidence after checking with editors at the paper.
He checked with them and they said there was no bias, so there!
Well, there you go!
Krugman's opinions never carried any weight anyways.
The Krugman Kool-Aid is 190 proof.
And this is why they are having massive layoffs now, and will have even bigger layoffs next year.
Who're you gonna believe? Byron Calame, or your lying eyes?
Calame's predecessor in the ombudsman-without-ombudsman-powers role at the Time, Daniel Okrent, also went way out on a limb to deny any institutional slant or bias. In the end all Okrent's tour as Public Editor did was damage Okrent's personal credibility.
Calame, of course, comes to the job with less neutral a record than Okrent, so he has less credibility to lose.
As far as making corrections in their blogs instead of their print columns, the dwindling number of print edition readers mostly read the Times to get their lower-Manhattan liberalism reinforced. They're not interesting in hearing about errors by the likes of Krugman, they think the sun shines out of Krugman's rectum.
Which we know is impossible, as his head and shoulders would eclipse the thing, and since he's only 4' 10" tall or so, the sun would only shine at a very low angle.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
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