more on Another view -- you choose -- Michelle Malkin Distorts Krugman

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Valued Customer <s5218906 () earthlink net>
Date: June 16, 2004 10:11:40 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] more on Another view -- you choose -- Michelle Malkin  
Distorts Krugman

Dave-
For IP, if you wish.

Yesterday, Michelle Malkin  
<http://michellemalkin.com/archives/000033.htm> argues that Paul  
Krugman  
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/15/opinion/15KRUG.html? 
pagewanted=print&position=> is entitled to his own opinion about  
Ashcroft, but not to his own set of facts about terrorist prosecutions.  
To make her point, she excerpts part of an earlier Krugman column (May  
11, 2004  
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/11/opinion/11KRUG.html? 
ei=5070&en=e2baefa566f38d6b&ex=1087531200&pagewanted=print&position=>)  
in which he again complains that Ashcroft has not convicted any actual  
terrorists. Of course, she left out of her excerpt his next sentence  
which read, "(Look at the actual trials of what Dahlia Lithwick  
<http://slate.msn.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2098948> of Slate  
calls "disaffected bozos who watch cheesy training videos," and you'll  
see what I mean.)." Since he was not unaware of these prosecutions,  
Krugman was expressing an opinion about what constituted 'actual'  
terrorists. The list of convicted terrorists that Malkin offers to  
rebuke Krugman, if one takes the time to try to even remember who they  
were, actually makes Krugman's point, that these were 'disaffected  
bozos,' not actual, competent terrorists. No doubt they represented a  
problem that needed cleaning up, but not something which merits  
boasting about.

One might disagree with Krugman's assessment of the importance of these  
cases, but that is his opinion which Malkin asserts he is entitled to.  
Yet, instead of taking on Krugman's opinion, Malkin tries to subvert it  
by pretending he was simply ignorant of facts. This is contumelious and  
typical of what David Brock documents in "The Republican Noise Machine:  
Right Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy."

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