Untimely NY Times Corrections Plus New Egg-On-Face Update

As everyone knows, the New York Times doesn't print a comics page. Why? Because the Times' corrections are vastly more amusing.

For the uninitiated, the most priceless gems include:

correcting the mis-attributed name of Professor Glenn Reynolds (i.e., Instapundit), eight years after the original article;

erroneously doubting actor Charles Bronson's WWII heroism--in Bronson's obituary (an article the Times had 30 years to fact-check); and

acknowledging error from an editorial ridiculing rocket pioneer Robert Goddard and the feasibility of space travel--49 years later and only three days before Americans landed on the moon!

But even after the Jayson Blair fiasco, the Times never learned its lesson, as evidenced by last week's retraction of a year-old Maureen Dowd column. MoDo outrageously mis-quoted the President to suggest that he asserted the war against Al Qaeda already was won. The President actually only claimed victory over those terrorists already captured or killed. The column created a huge kurfuffle on the Internet, detailed here. But despite voluminous calls for retraction, and cancellations of Dowd's syndicated column, the Grey Lady said nothing.

Until last week, when the Times conceded the point:

A Maureen Dowd column from May 14th, 2003 quoted President Bush out of context regarding the threat posed by al-Qaeda terrorists. The quotation was taken from the president's May 5 remarks in Little Rock. The full text of his remarks follows: "That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly, but surely, being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top al-Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they're not a problem anymore." The use of the partial quotation created the false impression that the president was dismissing the threat posed by al-Qaeda as a whole rather than its members who had been killed or apprehended.

Just under a year is, of course, better than just under a half-century. But Dowd's error was well publicized, and retraction was in the Times' economic interest. I can imagine no clearer demonstration of the mass-media's loyality to lies in service of the left.

Isn't it time you quit reading the Times?

Update:

I've been scammed--and should have known better. Of course neither MoDo nor the Times was gonna take it back. I, and several others in the blogosphere, saw the brilliant parody site linked above, and believed. Yes, it's a tremendous parody; yes I should have known. The letter-perfect article's the product of Robert Cox, editor of The National Debate. Oops--I goofed.

Shame on me for hoping. Everyone knows that being a liberal is never having to say you're sorry.