Boffoblog

Disgrace in Story on Bush Tapes

I was shocked by what I read in the Washington Post today about the leaked Bush tapes.  Here is the passage:

Bush also seems to infer on one tape that he has tried marijuana, which he has never admitted publicly.

Come again?  At least three professionals at one of the country's finest newspapers -- reporters Lois Romano and Mike Allen and an anonymous copy editor -- don't know the difference between "infer" and "imply."

Either that or Bush was so hopped up on booze and cocaine that he couldn't say for sure whether he was smoking grass, too.  In which case they used the correct word.

Corrections of the Week

Geography lessons desperately needed at the Chicago Tribune:

In Thursday's main news section, a map showing the location of U.S. nuclear power plants incorrectly labeled Arizona as New Mexico. There are three nuclear reactors at Arizona's Palo Verde site; New Mexico has no nuclear reactors.

Because of an editing error, a New York Times news story Tuesday about Chinese military sales to Iran referred to Iran as an "Arab nation." It is not.

Finally, because some may have missed the original story, the LA Times correction gives us most of what we need to know:

A story in some copies of [Wednesday's] Calendar suggested that Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," was being considered as a "potential inheritor" of an anchor role on the "CBS Evening News." In his session Tuesday at the Television Critics Assn. meeting in Universal City, CBS Chairman and Chief Executive Leslie Moonves did not characterize Stewart as such but said he wouldn't rule out approaching Stewart for some other type of role in the newscast after Dan Rather retires. Also, noting that Comedy Central and CBS are both owned by Viacom, the story quoted Moonves as saying, "Jon Stewart is part of our company, so we would talk to him." Moonves actually said: "Jon Stewart is part of our company. We speak to him regularly about all sorts of different things."

Correction of the Week: Holiday Edition

Ellen Goodman's column in yesterday's Boston Globe lists the corrections and regrets from her year's columns.  Here is but one:

Have you noticed that the only thing that the abstinence-only crowd cannot abstain from is criticizing their critics? Writing about their sex mis-education, we chided a text for teaching, among other things, that "cervical cancer is the result of premarital sex." Dozens of readers wrote to insist that since the human papillomavirus strain may cause cervical cancer, this cancer qualifies as a sexually transmitted disease.

Well, folks, it's still not the premarital sex that causes the cancer. But let's make a deal: We will add that STD footnote to our annual list if they will add condoms to their curriculum.

Persons of the Year

This via Crooked Timber: In the wake of you-know-who being named Time Person of the Year, take a look at who Time Canada called its Newsmaker of the Year.  Makes for a fascinating juxtaposition, no?

Exhibit #347a that Canadians are a fundamentally more decent people.

Correction of the Week

From the December 16th Chicago Tribune:

A Dec. 5 story about a rally in Chicago misquoted Victor Wojtychiw, a Ukrainian American, in describing this statement as an old Ukrainian saying: "It doesn't matter how many votes there are; it matters who counts the votes." In fact, the saying is widely attributed to Josef Stalin.

Rah, Rah! Fight, Fight, Fight!

At the risk of getting depressed and pissed off all over again, read the CNN transcript Atrios has posted of the night bombing began in Baghdad.  Shock and awe, indeed.

Needless to say, none of the principals has engaged in any public introspection about their cheerleading that day.

A Rose Is a Rose

As IsThatLegal points out, a certain rightwing gadfly has been caught showing her blatant hypocrisy.  (No, not that rightwing gadfly, the other one.)

CBS Hypocrisy

Joshua Marshall has already dissected the highly tendentious claims by CBS as to why it would not run the innocuous UCC spot advertising diversity.

Now Pudentilla points out the naked hypocrisy of the network's decision.  It turns out the network had accepted a pro-diversity campaign by the Methodists in 2001.  The only difference was the Methodists didn't include gays pictorially, whereas the UCC ad did.

Had CBS changed its policy in the meantime?  Possible, but unlikely.  Which brings us back to the network's claim that because the president has proposed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, it cannot run an ad which says a church welcomes gays.  Leaving aside the bizarre policy itself, which Marshall and Pudentilla and others discuss, what is revealing is the leap taken from the question of gay marriage -- an important but discrete topic -- to, apparently, any mention or implication of gay people whatsoever.

(Finally, as Pudentilla reminds us, this is the same Methodist church that yesterday defrocked a lesbian minister.)

Like Our World, But Different

Check out this well-crafted spoof of CNN -- now! -- before their lawyers force the page to be taken down.

Alas, all the Canadians did was serve him Alberta beef.  They're definitely much too polite.

They Flinched

As Joshua Marshall reported initially, a rather innocuous spot produced by the United Church of Christ to advertise itself as a church tolerant and welcoming of difference has been rejected by NBC, CBS and UPN because it is "too controversial."

Jerome Armstrong at MyDD explains further that various cable networks owned by Viacom, among others, will be running the ad.  Why?  Until we hear otherwise from the UCC, my best guess is that the broadcasters are running scared from the FCC due to its overzealous and capricious crackdown on "indecency," as I have discussed before.

Since cable networks are not covered by the FCC, they have a little less to worry about.  They seem to have made the calculation that while the FCC might step in due to even a few complaints from rightwing groups like Focus on the Family, it is less likely these groups would be able to mobilize sufficient numbers over the UCC spots in order to influence other advertisers to pull theirs.

In other words, the religious right has already achieved the victory they desired: Getting the broadcasters to self-censor due to the merest threat of FCC intervention.  Thus it is no longer a First Amendment issue since no governmental action occurred, leaving no legal remedy to fight the networks' decision.  (Free speech lawyers, please prove me wrong.)

Postscript at 12:35pm: Go check out Pudentilla's discussion of this as well.  She makes some good, pragmatic points on this issue along with her usual witty dose of righteous outrage.