Your Email:

Subject:

Message:
Entry: The Smear Bund Never Rests Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/the_smear_bund_never_rests#12537 Post contents: My favorite part of Heffernan's piece was in the fourth paragraph: "Little Green Footballs, the hawkish and rigidly empiricist blog that first furnished evidence of memo-forging in the Rathergate case, has started due diligence, discovering that Paul has indeed dropped some cash at the theme-restaurant Tara Thai (“the first time I went here I didn’t like my dish that much, but the second time I ate here the food was better,” according to Yelp)." The name of the restaurant, Tara Thai, hyperlinks to a "disbursements by payee" report for the Ron Paul 2008 Presidential Campaign Committee, apparently filed December 15, 2007. http://query.nictusa.com/pres/2007/Q3/C00432914/B_PAYEE_C00432914.html The campaign apparently spent $314.59 at Tara Thai at some point. Id. Not clear to me from the report if Dr. Paul "dropped" the cash himself. But you might think the quote cinches it. You might think that the quote in the parentheses is a quote of Ron Paul, as quoted by Yelp, whomever they are. You'd be wrong. At least, probably wrong. In the Times piece, the word Yelp hyperlinks to a social networking site. "Yelp; Real People. Real Reviews." TM. "Yelp is the fun and easy way to find, review and talk about what's great (and not so great) in your world...." Id. If you click on the link in the NY Times story, you'd get Yelp's page for that restaurant. http://www.yelp.com/biz/tara-thai-arlington. It looks like the first review is where Miss Heffernan got the quote. From one Brent S. of Arlington, Virginia. Clicking through Brent S.'s hyperlink, it appears he is a frequent reviewer, originally from Red Lion, Pennsyvlania, now living in Arlington, VA. I daresay he's not Ron Paul posting under a pseudonym but rather a regular guy posting on that particular social networking website, somewhat anonomously. So why would an anonyomous regular guy's review be quoted so prominently and, let's face it, suggestively, in Miss Heffernan's piece? Perhaps because the author intended the implication that Ron Paul said it, and that the truth of the quote itself, if attributed to Paul, would constitute an admission by Paul that he was there; that the author of the piece, or rather the piece cited, did the due diligence of an honest reporter and asked Ron Paul about the restaurant and his alleged connection to the disreputable persons and that, in response, all Ron Paul had to say in his defense was that the food was dissappointing at first but better the second time. If all true, that would reflect rather badly on Mr. Paul. But it appears to be mere innnuendo. Clever, but empty; a quote about the restaurant, but not from Ron Paul. Reflecting on the placement of the quote suggests --if we may be permitted to do some suggesting of our own, that the Times was trying to mislead the reader; that they never bothered to check with Paul or the campaign before publishing this piece but merely wanted to imply such diligence and attribution. Or, another alternative: The Times, in a story about how a rising presidential candidate is secretly dining with neo-nazi's, thinks it of prime importance that the reader should know something about the establishment's food, and that the best way to pass along that information is through the suggestive placement of an anonymous third-party amateur's culinary report. Or, yet another alternative: the editors cut out early today. So, in sum, we were not mislead. But was there an attempt to mislead? Awfully sad to have to parse the Grey Lady like this. Sent at: 2008 11 23