When I Say ‘Study,’ Please Bow

If the still-sacred term “study” is attached to data, no matter how outrageous, the information is regarded as unassailable. It is, after all, the product of scholarly “study.”

Political journalists may be slow learners, but they do eventually catch on.

When I first saw the “935” story, I turned to Murgatroyd, my chubby-but-still-useful secretary, and asked her to fetch further data. She researched numerous newspapers and websites.

The consensus, Murgatroyd reported, was that the newspapers believed that the most commonly reported numbers and assertions were reliable, invulnerable, accurate because they were gathered by another modern-day icon, “two” “non-profit” organizations.

That clinched it for the skeptical side of me.
As you know, “non-profit” status confers on a group the inability to commit sin or to entertain the teeniest fault.

Wow, Two for the Price of One

Further, we are told that not just one sacred group exposed this dirty lying habit but two organizations. Only technically, as we shall see.

The sacred “study” by two sacred “non-profits” proved that the President and his lackeys told 935 lies that “were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses,” newspapers reported to gullible readers.

I presumed that the barely identified authors of the “study,” the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism, were latter-day Paul Reveres.

There Goes the Music Again

As I read Murgatroyd’s data from the “study,” in the background I could hear the Marine Corps Band striking up “From the Halls of Montezuma” while the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, life-sized flags held aloft, throatily chanted “America the Beautiful.”

This was no time for a patriot to sit.

I stood.

Silently I marveled at the “study’s” breathtakingly brave Statues of Liberty, these death-defying, scintillating sentinels who stand guard all day and all night, sleep-be-darned, so that America’s hard-fought bastions of unparalleled freedom never are threatened.

Except for the Wall Street Journal (http://messageboards.aol.com/aol/en_us/articles), no newspaper of my acquaintance questioned the integrity of the authors.

“The Center for Public Integrity” sounds more patriotic than Franklin, Jefferson, Washington and Adams combined. How red, white and blue can you get? Much more, it turns out. Research shows it is heavily funded by George Soros, the richest, most politically-oriented left-wing extremist in this section of the planet.

Our friendly neighborhood liberal journalists, in print and on television, are bedeviled by an annoying habit of never questioning information from extreme-left sources, as in this case.

You Trust The Times, Don’t You?

Take the free world’s pet icon of objective journalism, The New York Times. The editor, Bill Keller, and the publisher, Punch Salzberger, you may know, are scalawags who specialize in character assassination.

The hot current examples are President Bush, any Republican of note, especially former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and the Iraq War. As the increasingly desperate Times has lost revenue by the millions and circulation by the hundreds of thousands in the last four years, Mr. Keller and Mr. Salzberger have become more shrill and more petulant in their war opposition by the day. The last three Sundays, they have, in their desperation, published a front-page series demonizing American war heroes. Nearly as many reportorial opinions surface in “news” stories as in the Op-Ed columns. Earlier this month, The Times was caught lying about a byline that columnist Maureen Dowd used, but it escaped wide notice. She was in Israel and her column was datelined New Hampshire. The Times stuttered and managed to keep the information largely closed off.

The day after the present “study” was announced last week, The Times praised it for being “remarkable” in its scope.

What the nation’s newspapers and wire services did not tell you was that the Washington-based “Center for Public Integrity,” whose mission statement boasts that it is comprised of “independent,” “non-advocacy” journalists is, in fact, the opposite. It is a hothouse for far-leftists. Led by a former National Public Radio executive, they have been one of the White House’s most persistent critics on the war, Mr. Bush, American military policy and America’s “human rights” record. Toward terrorists, they practice a kinder, gentler approach.

Far-Left Identical Twins

If there is a difference, in purpose or motivation, between the Center and the equally benign sounding “Fund for Independence in Journalism,” it is undetectable.

Virulently anti-Republican, anti-conservative, anti-war, and pro-the-liberal-agenda with nary an exception, exactly what the “Fund” is “independent” of remains shrouded.

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My Inkwell Runneth Dry

To say that “study” was produced by “two” groups is the equivalent of saying that not only did Mr. Ari Noonan recently welcome a new son into the world, so did Mrs. Noonan.

You see, the “Fund for Independence in Journalism” was created five years ago, by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, to provide funding for the “Center for Public Integrity.”

Those darned liberals. They keep running out of ink before they have a chance to explain they are not really what they seem to be. Drat.