[Timesink]

I wonder if anything will come of this? I'm not holding my breath.

Sadly, nothing will. It's selective quoting, but she did quote him accurately and denote just where she skipped over some words.

Combine that with the fact she's a columnist and not a "reporter," she's completely immune to this.

[DallasMike]

Sadly, nothing will. It's selective quoting, but she did quote him accurately and denote just where she skipped over some words.

I'm afraid you're right. However, it doesn't hurt to write them at letters@nytimes.com and let them know about it. Altering a quote completely out of context really is considered bad form at newspapers and they might be more sensitive to these things today than they would have been several weeks ago. Consider this:

"I have never beaten my wife."

"I have ... beaten my wife."

Poor Mo is guilty of doing exactly what I did above.

[TomB]

Sadly, nothing will. It's selective quoting, but she did quote him accurately and denote just where she skipped over some words.

They've been hiding behind that mantra for years, and it is finally catching up to them.

Jayson Blair should call a press conference and hold up Dowd's piece......

er, yuck, bad choice of words.

....he should hold up her column and tell those assembled, "This is what I grew up reading from the Times. Why should I have ANY REASON to think that what I did was wrong?"

Why indeed.

[William McKinley]

"Sadly, nothing will.", said Freeper Timesink. "she did quote him accurately..."

Somehow, I doubt it is an acceptable standard to merely show (to those paying careful attention) where some words were omitted when clearly the entire tone of a comment can be turned on its head by the omission.

[Cicero]

As you say, it's a selective quote, including the suspension points where she left something out. It's questionably honest, but it's not an outright lie. And it doesn't actually misrepresent what Bush said, it just badly distorts it. But she can claim it's a fair quote, and many would jump to her defense.

What A. M. Rosenthal objected to before he was fired was treating senior officials of the United States with contempt. For instance, NYTimesstyle is "Secretary Rumsfeld or Mr. Rumseld," not "Rummy." And the President's name is not "Dubya" or "Shrub" in formal commentary. Nicknames are for use of your personal friends, not for OpEd attack pieces.

I object to Dowd's intolerable style, of which these are minor instances, more than her political stupidity.

[Ironword]

But she didn't quote Bush accurately. Capitalizing the "T" of "They're" (as opposed to the original, lowercase "t") and not denoting such by brackets --- as in [T] --- to show that a change has been made is not simply unacceptable when quoting in professional publishing, but is integral to Dowd's intent to attempt to change the meaning of what was said. Dowd could not have used the ellipses and lowercase "t" and developed the inference she sought; hence, the unmarked capitalization, making the phrase appear to be a stand-alone or complete sentence.

[tnlibertarian]

"Sadly,... she did... him... with the... reporter."

Did I get that accurate?