Category: Media

Newsweek falsely reported that US interrogators desecrated the Holy Koran, causing fatal riots:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Newsweek magazine said on Sunday it erred in a May 9 report that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, and apologized to the victims of deadly Muslim protests sparked by the article.

Editor Mark Whitaker said the magazine inaccurately reported that U.S. military investigators had confirmed that personnel at the detention facility in Cuba had flushed the Muslim holy book down the toilet.

The report sparked angry and violent protests across the Muslim world from
Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan to Indonesia to Gaza. In the past week it was condemned in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and by the Arab League.

On the Al Franken show today, the host made jokes about US desecration of the Koran, the Bible, the sayings of Confucius, and a few other holy books. It’s really funny when people are murdered by angry lynch mobs, isn’t it? (This kind of shit is the reason Franken failed as a comedian.)

Franken also lied about the use of the Senate filibuster against judges. While there are a few historical examples of the filibuster being used against certain judges – Abe Fortas was the last – these were not partisan or systematic uses like the use the Democrats are making of it today. Fortas had foes on both sides of the aisle, he wasn’t one of several judges being filibustered at the same time by the same party, and he was already on the court. Fortas, who later resigned for ethical problems, was a crony of LBJ who was proposed for a promotion to Chief Justice.

Franken was also lying about social security and promoting the “Franken donut”.

See Bill Quick for links on the Newsweek thing, as does Jeff Jarvis and Glenn what’s-his-name.

UPDATE: See this story about the Newsweek apology, especially interesting for those maintaining the story was true.

Newsweek apologized yesterday for an inaccurate report on the treatment of detainees that triggered several days of rioting in Afghanistan and other countries in which at least 15 people died.

And see the Newsweek non-apology apology itself, a marvel of cunning yellow journalism:

The spokesman also said the Pentagon had investigated other desecration charges by detainees and found them “not credible.” Our original source later said he couldn’t be certain about reading of the alleged Qur’an incident in the report we cited, and said it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts. Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges, and so will we. But we regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst.

“We’re sorry people died but maybe we didn’t lie.”

No, Newsweek, you lied and people died. Don’t publish this kind of crap without fact-checking it.

UPDATE Again: Newsweek finally retracts the story: “Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Quran abuse at Guantanamo Bay,” Whitaker said. Now will the dim-witted Al Franken retract his disgusting jokes?

It’s all very confusing to Joe Gandelman (and the rest of the world as well.)

Today Al Franken is broadcasting from Sacramento, before an audience of noisy loons with the coffee-shop weekly grasp of politics. He made the mistake of interviewing Dan Walters, the dean of Sacramento journalists on the state of politics in California. Franken showed his igorance and desire to deceive several times:

1. Called Walters a conservative when he’s clearly a centrist.
2. Blamed California’s education problems on Prop 13 exclusively.
3. Equated Schwarzenegger’s fundraising for inititiatives to Gray Davis’ personal fundraising.
4. Reduced the California ballot wars to a business vs. the People war.
5. Claimed Schwarzenegger tried to take pensions away from widows and orphans.

People don’t take Franken seriously because he’s an alleged comedian, but a comprehensive scorecard would probably show that he’s the most deceptive host in talk radio, with the possible exception of Janeane Garofalo or Randi Rhodes.

John Cole observes moonbats on the Huffy-puffy blog:

And there you have the far left in a nutshell: smug, condescending, deceitful, paranoid, self-congratulating, in denial and divorced from reality, and wholly uncredible. Some choice the American system has- John Conyers or Pat Robertson. Isn’t there any way to marginalize stupid?

Listening to Al Franken broadcasting from Portland this morning I observed the same thing. He told lie after lie to a screaming, cheering, applauding audience as willing to be deceived as the Scientology membership or the voters in Nazi Germany.

Did you know that Franken invented left-wing radio? That’s what he claimed, despite the fact that Pacifica, NPR, and stations like KGO were with us long before Air America got Clear Channel into that game. He must have invented the Internet too. And did you know that there’s no legitimate constitutional question about the Social Security Act, which was only approved by the Supreme Court by a 5-4 margin after court-packing? That’s what he said. Or that we wouldn’t have minimum wage laws without it? Even in a state with its own minimum wage set higher than the federal standard the audience ate this up.

The political dialog that matters in this country – the one that engages the largest number of voters – is almost wholly divorced from the facts. That’s a problem.

Incidentally, somebody could do a whole blog just covering the lies Al Franken, the failed comedian, tells every morning to his retarded audience but I don’t get paid enough to do it myself. Maybe a tag-team approach would work.