Friday, February 03, 2006

Publishing crap: Easy. Retracting crap: Not so much.


Apparently, the same traditional news outlets who fell over George Bush's "vows" to cut Middle East oil imports by 75% by the year 2025 aren't in as much of a rush to point out that, by the very next day, he was admitting that he was, you know, kidding.

Some papers, like the San Jose Mercury News, were right on top of the retraction. And Canada's own National Post? Apparently, they still haven't figured out Part II, based on Friday's piece by Sheldon Alberts (no link available) which opens with:

Three days after George W. Bush declared "America is addicted to oil," the remark is still being treated with something like amazement by Americans, even though it was perhaps the most glaringly obvious thing the President has said in five years.

Earth to Sheldon: three days after he said it is also two days after he retracted it. Try to keep up.

AFTERSNARK: Just to be perfectly clear, there is nothing anywhere in Alberts' piece that even hints of Bush's backpedaling. Au contraire, we have Alberts, clearly reading from the neo-con playbook which demands that everything Commander Chimpy does must be described as "bold" or "grand" or both:

Never one to shrink from grand ideas, Bush spoke boldly of moving "beyond a petroleum-based economy" and replacing more than 75% of America"s oil imports from the Middle East by 2025.

Hey, Sheldon -- I can make bold pronouncements, too, if I get to renege on them the next day. Geez, what a doofus.

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