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David Harsanyi writes on the NY Times bias against Israel.
The New York Times issued a correction today to fix a demonstrably false editorial that claimed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spent “days of near silence” before condemning the murder of Arab teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir. Netanyahu had, in fact, called the killing an “abominable murder,” and on the day of the killing issued a statement instructing his minister for internal security to investigate the crime. Three Israeli suspects were arrested and have since confessed to the murder.
Even with a correction, the editorial in question was a mess from the top down. The NewRepublic has a good rundown of other egregious errors and misleading points that won’t be getting much-needed corrections. It’s likely that the editorial page was simply relying on the news side to feed its preconceived biases (though one story had already reported on Netanyahu’s comments), which is a mistake considering the NYT’s reporting exhibits absolutely no journalistic standards when it comes to the topic.
This is nothing new. Let’s momentarily set aside the decades-long institutional bias at the paper and simply focus on factual errors of the past few years: …
Seth Mandel has more on the Times’ editorial that prompted Harsanyi’s post.
Earlier this week I wrote about the thoroughly dishonest and ignorant editorial in the New York Times on the recent abduction and killing of four teens in Israel. The Times strove for moral equivalence since the victims included Jews and an Arab. To review: the Times editorial wrongly accused Benjamin Netanyahu of a delay in condemning the killing of an Arab teen and the editors took a Netanyahu quote that denounced the desire for vengeance and claimed it meant Netanyahu was doing the opposite and inciting vigilante terrorism. After wide condemnation, the Times corrected the editorial. Sort of. …
4th of July post from Mark Steyn.
… Speaking of lèse-majesté, even when our sovereign liege lord is not present, it is improper to disrespect him. For example, Friday’s Fourth of July parade in Norfolk, Nebraska included a float with a wooden outhouse labeled “Obama Presidential Library”. According to the gentlemen of the press, the float has “drawn criticism“. I should certainly hope so. I assumed that the criticism it had drawn would be from freeborn citizens hoping for something a little less generic and anodyne in the way of Presidential mockery.
But no, the court eunuchs of the media are huffin’ an’ a-puffin’ about how this time the Obama-haters have gone too far:
Norfolk City Councilman Dick Pfeil told the Omaha World-Herald that he was unhappy with the float, and he wanted to make clear the city had not approved it.
Because nothing better exemplifies the spirit of Independence Day than having your float approved by the government.
Charles Krauthammer says an immigration fix is a no-brainer.
… Obama blames the crisis on Republicans for failing to pass comprehensive immigration reform.
More nonsense. It’s a total non sequitur. Comprehensive reform would not have prevented the current influx. Indeed, any reform that amnesties 11 million illegal immigrants simply reinforces the message that if you come here illegally, eventually you will be allowed to stay.
It happens that I support immigration reform. I support amnesty. I have since 2006. But only after we secure the border.
Which begins with completing the fencing along the Mexican frontier. Using 2009 Government Accountability Office estimates, that would have cost up to $6.6 billion. Obama will now spend more than half that sum to accommodate a mass migration that would have been prevented by just such a barrier.
But a fence is for the long term. For the immediate crisis, the answer is equally, blindingly clear: Eliminate the Central American exception and enforce the law.
It must happen. The nightmare will continue until it does. The only question is: How long until Obama is forced to do the obvious?
The big sports news of the summer was LeBron James returning to Cleveland. John Kass of Chicago claims it’s a Midwestern thing.
If you’re from the Midwest, you probably hated LeBron James.
Who didn’t?
Not true hatred, of course. I’m talking about sports hatred.
It’s not something you act on. But it’s bitter, and it just sits there on your heart as you watch that other team celebrate or that other player with the rings kissing the trophy, that one athlete who seems to cut your heart out year after year.
We’ve seen such athletes before. And LeBron is one of them.
But no matter how hard I try, I can’t hate him anymore. And you probably don’t hate him anymore either, not the way we once did. That’s gone.
LeBron is going home to Cleveland after four years in Miami, four years of SouthBeach glamour, four NBA Finals and two championship rings.
He’s devious enough to have planned it. He left Cleveland for Miami, and during those four years, Cleveland hit rock bottom, and Cavaliers fans hated him the most. Over those years, the team picked up plenty of young talent.
So LeBron now returns to reap the love and the rings to come, and try as I might, I can’t hate him anymore. Perhaps it’s because I can recognize a pattern in all this. …
… But if you’re from the Midwest and you’ve gone away, then returned, determined to stick it out, then you’ll understand. And you’ll understand LeBron.
“Before anyone ever cared where I would play basketball, I was a kid from northeast Ohio. It’s where I walked,” James was quoted as saying by SI.com. “It’s where I ran. It’s where I cried. It’s where I bled. It holds a special place in my heart. People there have seen me grow up. I sometimes feel like I’m their son. Their passion can be overwhelming. But it drives me. I want to give them hope when I can. I want to inspire them when I can.”
Reading that, I know what he was doing in SouthBeach for those four years he was away from Ohio. …
And then there is a speech by the president. Terry Jeffrey said he talked about himself. No news there.
… The White House presented Obama’s speech, which the president delivered at Austin’s Paramount Theatre, as “Remarks by the President on the Economy.” The remarks, the White House reports, ran 40 minutes, and the full transcript (including annotations for “laughter” and “applause”) is more than 5,500 words.
By contrast, President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was only 272 words–and did not include any form of the first person singular.
In President Obama’s speech, he used a first person singular, on average, every 12 seconds. At that rate, had Obama spoken for just 15 more minutes, he would have used the first person singular more than 272 times in one speech—exceeding all the words in the Gettysburg Address.
In one 68-word passage–in which he vowed to act unilaterally if Congress did not enact legislation he liked–Obama used the first person singular five more times than the zero times Lincoln used it in his 272 words at Gettysburg.