Six quotes overheard in New Hampshire.
By Chris Suellentrop
Posted Monday, Jan. 12, 2004, at 5:47 PM PT

[I am late on this and I am quoting Slate without permission. It seems that Chris Suellentrop has gotten a lot of attention very quickly. This article is harshly criticized by Joshua Micah Marshall, Mark Kleiman and Kevin Drum, among, I suspect many others. I would like to join the chorus. The article is almost comically dishonest. I fear that Suellentrop will benefit from the notoriety, but I do think that Slate should consider raising its editorial standards to something positive. Needless to say, Drum, Kleiman and Marshall do a better (and much briefer) job than I do. Drum notes that some of his commenters claim that the Suellentrop article was comically dishonest not almost comically dishonest, because it was meant as a parody of bad journalism. Also, I just now looked up Kleiman's post to get a permalink and found that he has added an update to that effect.

My comments in brackets]

Whether it's true or not, Gen. Wesley Clark's rise in the polls in New Hampshire is being partly attributed to some voters having "cold feet" about former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, especially Dean's penchant for making statements that are quickly seized upon by Fox News or the Republican Party as evidence of unpatriotic disloyalty. But Clark has the same propensity for speaking imprecisely off the cuff. Here are some statements I heard him make last week during my trip with him in New Hampshire:


Bush was "warned" about 9/11? "President Bush didn't do his job as commander in chief in the early months of his administration. He was warned that the greatest threat to the United States of America was Osama Bin Laden, yet on the 11th of September in 2001, the United States had no plan for dealing with the threat posed by Osama Bin Laden. The ship of state was on autopilot. There were good CIA officers and FBI officers and everybody doing what they'd been taught to do, but the essential leadership process of putting focus on the resources of the United States, and giving these agencies a real target and a mission, it wasn't done. At least, I think that's what the evidence will show if we ever get the results of this presidential commission, and if they've asked the right questions." (Jan. 6, McKelvie Middle School, Bedford.)

[Here the paraphrase is ?Bush was ?warned? about 9/11?. The quote is ?He was warned that the greatest threat to the United States of America was Osama Bin Laden? The paraphrase quotes one word, yes one word out of context. The Bush administration (in the Person of Rice) was specifically told that Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda would be it?s biggest foreign policy problem. Shortening this to Bush was warned is perfectly reasonable. The completely unjustified substitution of ? 9/11? for ?Osama Bin Laden? would make the reader to lazy to read the actual quote think that Clark had claimed that Bush had a much more specific warning (about a specific day). The distortion is so blatant that the article is actually useful, at least, if there is anyone who takes Slate seriously. Clearly this misquote tells us that Clark is well informed and addresses a very important issue and that Suellentrop and the editors of Slate are either either honest idiots or dishonest idiots (or someone parodying dishonest idiots)]

Bush "never intended" to get Osama Bin Laden? "We bombed Afghanistan, we missed Osama Bin Laden, partly because the president never intended to put the resources in to get Osama Bin Laden. All along, right after 9/11, they'd made their mind up, I guess, that we were going to go after Saddam Hussein. That's what people in the Pentagon told me. And they capped the resources, stopped the commitment to Afghanistan, and started shifting to prepare to go after Saddam Hussein." (Jan. 6, McKelvie Middle School, Bedford.)

[Again the paraphrase grossly and obviously distorts the quote. This time it quotes 2 words not one. Clarks claim is that resources were withdrawn from Afganistan as part of building up to Iraq. Again this is demonstrably true (and obvious). The paraphrase would be accurate if Clark had claimed that bush had put no, 0 (zero) resources into getting Bin Laden. It should be obvious to anyone who reads the quote that Clark said no such thing.]

There wasn't a single terrorist in Iraq before the war? "The president was not and has not been held accountable yet for misleading the American people. He is continuing to associate Saddam, Iraq, and the problem of terrorism. Yet the only terrorists that are in Iraq are the people that have come there to attack us." (Jan. 7, Town House, Peterborough.)

[Here I think the paraphrase is accurate if harsh. It is a criticism of the word ?only? which justifies the word single. I think Clark?s substantive claim is accurate and important. To be precise, ?the only? should be ?the vast majority? and Clark should have mentioned Ansar Al Islam in the part of Iraq not controlled by Saddam Hussein. ]


Fifty-five million voters are "ill-informed" dupes of the Christian right? "Now, there's one party in America that's made the United Nations the enemy. And I don't know how many of you have ever read that series of books that's published by the Christian right that's called the "Left Behind" series? Probably nobody's read it up here. But don't feel bad, I'm not recommending it to you. I'm just telling you that according to the book cover that I saw in the airport, 55 million copies have been printed. And in it, the Antichrist is the United Nations. And so there's this huge, ill-informed body of sentiment out there that's just grinding away against the United Nations." (Jan. 7, Fuller Elementary School, Keene.)

[The offensive word ?dupes? is added in the paraphrase. It does not appear in the quote. If Clark had said the number of ill informed voters is 55 million, he would almost certainly be wrong (the number is much higher and I include myself and certainly Suellentrop). Clark is commenting on a book. Suellentrop does not address the contents of the book. ]

Does Islam need an Enlightenment or just Match.com? "Young men in an Islamic culture cannot get married until they can support a family. No job, no marriage. No marriage, unhappy young men. They get real angry, they feel real frustrated, they feel real powerless. And a certain number of them are being exploited in the mosques by this recruiting network." (Jan. 8, Havenwoods Heritage Heights senior center, Concord.)

[Here the paraphrase sounds absurd because Suellentrop includes the word ?just? which is in no way justified by the quote. Clark made an interesting point addressing an important issue (he might have added that polygyny implies lots of bachelors). The claim that he considers this the one and only cause of Islamic terrorism is completely unfounded. ]

President Bush doesn't even want to find Bin Laden? "Newsweek magazine says he's in the mountains of western Pakistan. And I guess if Newsweek could find him there, we could, too, if we wanted to." (Jan. 8, Havenwoods Heritage Heights senior center, Concord.)

[Arguably this might bring us up to 2 of 6 cases which are not disgraces to journalism (or parodies of disgraces to journalism). The quote does not imply the paraphrase. I think Clark should have added ?bad enough? or something. Of course he might have explained more in the next sentence.
It is, of course, very easy to distort the meaning of statements by cutting one or two sentences out of context. The fact that Suellentrop goes on to ?paraphrase? the brief quotes would have been a red flag to any serious editor. I think it is extraordinary that Suellentrop?s dishonesty is obvious to me even though I have no independent source of information on Clark?s statements.

At first I thought the article might be useful as an example of bad journalism, but now I am not sure. I think the real problems with bad journalism are much more subtle. I hope that journalism this awful will have an effect only on the reputation of Suellentrop and Slate. ]