Major Media Outed, Again

[Annie]

http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/006531.shtml#006531

August 23, 2004

I Remember It Like It Was Next Week ​

In the latest issue of Harper's, Lewis Lapham has a long, tiresome essay on the "Republican propaganda mill"--which, to judge by one of the accompanying graphs, includes the foundation that publishes Reason. (No wonder we find ourselves praising the president so often.) Lapham briefly mentions but otherwise ignores ideological divisions on "the right," lumping together "the Catholic conservatives with the Jewish neoconservatives, the libertarians with the authoritarians, the evangelical nationalists with the paranoid monetarists, Pat Robertson with the friends of the Ku Klux Klan." According to Lapham, all are part of the same conspiracy against decency and compassion, bound together by a common "resentment" (of what, exactly, he doesn't say). It tells you something about Lapham's acuity that he sees George W. Bush as a faithful disciple of Barry Goldwater. The main thrust of the piece is that all conservatives are stupid and closed-minded, with the possible exception of Irving Kristol.

Perhaps the most revealing part of the article is the paragraph where Lapham pretends to have heard the speeches at the Republican National Convention that does not open until a week from today. Referring to "the platform on which [George W. Bush] was trundled into New York City this August with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the heavy law enforcement, and the paper elephants," Lapham writes:

The speeches in Madison Square Garden affirmed the great truths now routinely preached from the pulpits of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal--government the problem, not the solution; the social contract a dead letter; the free market the answer to every maiden's prayer--and while listening to the hollow rattle of the rhetorical brass and tin, I remembered the question that [Richard] Hofstadter didn't stay to answer. How did a set of ideas both archaic and bizarre make its way into the center ring of the American political circus?

True, the issue is dated September, but I got my copy in early August, and Lapham must have written those words in July. Didn't it occur to him that his readers might notice he was claiming to have witnessed an event that had not occurred when the magazine went to press? Evidently, Republicans are not the only ones Lapham thinks are stupid.

Posted by Jacob Sullum at August 23, 2004 03:00 PM

 

[Merlin1047]

Ah, but he knows what will happen. He doesn't have to actually go there and listen, or even wait for the event to happen.

He's a journalist, you know. The are much smarter than you or I. Just ask them.

 

[tpahl]

Ah, but he knows what will happen. He doesn't have to actually go there and listen, or even wait for the event to happen.

He's a journalist, you know. The are much smarter than you or I. Just ask them.

To be fair, it could not be his fault at all. It is possible that he was going to be on vacation and had wrote a rough draft to be checked and chaged after the convention to ensure accuracy. The editors could have then decided to publish rather than wait.

or it could be the authors fault. But even then, it is the editors/fact checkers that should be getting the most heat for this.

Either way the editor should lose his job and possible the author (depending on the story).

 

[Merlin1047]

To be fair, . . . .

That's the most pertinent part of your statement. It is the duty of a journalist to be fair.

No matter what the circumstances may be, it is clear that being fair is not on Lapham's agenda.