That has to be one of the most disingenuous editing jobs I’ve ever seen. I’m a HUGE fan of Thompson. But starting out with “Fred Thompson tried...”, leaving off that the sentence was about how his campaign is (supposedly) dead... that’s beyond the pale.
Fred went from third in IA to last in NH. Regardless of NY Times' choice of words, I had two limiting factors: excerpts limited to 300 words and folks who refuse to access the NY Times.
The entire text of the article was 1167 words long. I used all of the 300 words alloted for excerpting to maximize Fred and his statements. If I copied and posted the first sentence, which was the first paragraph, all it would have done, IMHO, was provide fodder for bashing the NY Times and verifying the word count including the "--snip--" additions to the text. I'm tired of that. It offers nothing. That wasn't my point in posting the excerpts. Here's the first sentence and paragraph:
Fred D. Thompson tried to salvage his faltering presidential campaign at a debate Thursday night with a barrage of sharp attacks on the “liberal” policies of Mike Huckabee, the fellow Southerner whom he clearly sees as a rival in the South Carolina primary.