A Yawngate update: CNN called me to insist that despite what it first said, the administration really, truly wasn't responsible for the network's claim that David Letterman's embarrassing video of a Bush speech was a fake. I still don't understand why the network didn't deny White House involvement until it retracted the charge. But the main point of Friday's column was to highlight the way CNN facilitated crude administration smears of Richard Clarke.

The lesson: don't dare speak out against Krugman, because he'll smear you in America's newspaper of record -- and you'll run out of ink before he does. Well, go ahead Paul -- make my day, if you dare.

As to the example at hand, what possible difference does it make that "the network didn't deny White House involvement until it retracted the charge"? Who knows? But it sure makes it sound like Krugman's got pictures. And let's take the opportunity to smear Blitzer again, while we're at it (teach those guys at CNN to complain!) -- Blitzer, whose quotes Krugman doctored to make it seem as though he was passing on White House smears when in fact he was asking another reporter about them -- who denied there were any!

But the best part of Krugman's column is his citation of the New York Times Magazine's story last Sunday about the supposed evisceration of the Clean Air Act. Krugman: "As a devastating article in Sunday's New York Times Magazine documented, the administration's rollback of the Clean Air Act has gone beyond the polluters' wildest dreams."

What can I do but quote Gregg Easterbrook, writing for the blog of the liberal-leaning The New Republic?

"Up in Smoke: The Bush Administration, the Big Power Companies and the Undoing of 30 Years of Clean Air Policy." So blares the cover of yesterday's New York Times Magazine. Author Bruce Barcott isn't responsible for the headline, but might not it have occurred to some editor somewhere at the Times Magazine that there is nothing in the 13-page article that supports a claim of "undoing" clean air policy? All pollution regulated by the Clean Air Act is declining, has been declining for years, and continues to decline under George W. Bush. That's not mentioned in the 13 pages, since it would more or less spoil the entire premise of the story and the dramatic cover.

The gang at the Associated Press evidently hasn't been reading its own clips. As we pointed out yesterday, the AP's Tom Raum and Nedra Pickler let the Kerry camp spin them by declaring that Bush has "lost 3 million jobs" during his term in office. The actual number is either 2.2 million, if you're counting from January 2001, or 2.3 million if you start with the employment numbers from February 2001. Today, AP's Terence Hunt follows ignominiously in the tracks of his fellow wire servers, quoting Kerry stating that "This administration has one economic policy for America -- 3 million jobs lost and driving gas prices towards $3 a gallon," without contradicting the Massachsuetts senator's bogus number.

"I thought Krugman was writing about the Times' corrections policy for its columnists!" wrote new ex officio Krugman Truth Squad member Robert Lawrence.

My own fantasy was that Krugman was writing about the time he falsely accused me on national television of having "stalked" him "personally." No? Maybe, then -- speaking of stalking -- it would be about when Bill Clinton gave instructions to his political operatives to smear Monica Lewinsky as a stalker. No, that got nixed when Lewinsky produced a certain blue dress with another kind of smear on it.

Come on. This is Paul Krugman we're talking about. America's most dangerous liberal pundit. If he's talking about smears -- or about anything bad, for that matter -- we can be sure that it's something he thinks the Bush administration has done. In this case the, Bush administration's so-called "smear" was -- as Krugman Truth Squad member Jim Taranto put it on his Wall Street Journal Best of the Web Today blog -- "an accusation of airing made-up stuff on a comedy show."

Yes, it's all about a story that the New York Times didn't deem important enough to bother to waste ink on, other than Krugman's ink -- the matter of the yawning boy standing behind President Bush at a Florida speech, caught on video and shown last week as a gag on David Letterman's "Late Show." Why would Krugman even bother to mention such a thing? Robert Musil theorizes on his Man Without Qualities blog that Krugman "appears to have been competing with Maureen Dowd in some contest to posit the most bizarre parallels between some popular culture ephemera and a national political development." If  that's the case, then Krugman wins with this one.

The so-called "smear" is that CNN ran the Letterman clip last Tuesday during its morning news show, after which host Daryn Kagan said "We're being told by the White House that the kid, as funny as he was, was edited into that video, which would explain why the people around him weren't really reacting." Later, CNN reran the tape during another show, and anchor Kyra Phillips said, "We're told that the kid was there at that event, but not necessarily standing behind the president." Late in the afternoon CNN called Letterman's office to say it was all a mistake. Letterman said on his Tuesday show, "CNN has just phoned and ... the anchorwoman misspoke. They never got a comment from the White House. It was a CNN mistake."

As the Associated Press summed it up, "The truth was: The White House never complained, and the footage was real."

But that's not good enough for Krugman. Krugman will cite the AP as an authority when its views agree with his, as he did in his Tuesday column last week, stating that "an Associated Press news analysis noted that...personal attacks were 'standard operating procedure' for this administration." But in this case, Krugman writes, "here's the really interesting part: CNN...told Mr. Letterman that Ms. Kagan 'misspoke,' that the White House was not the source of the false claim. (So who was? And if the claim didn't come from the White House, why did CNN run with it without checking?)"

"Fact checking"? Krugman -- he of the infinitude of unchecked unfacts so lovingly documented for him ex post in these web pages, he who writes for a newspaper that admits it does no fact-checking itself -- must be joking. This isn't about fact checking. It's about something so alien to Krugman that he didn't recognize it when it was right in front of his face: this was a correction. That's right: CNN had the guts to do what Krugman and the rest of the Times columnists can scarcely bear to imagine -- admit a mistake in public, and apologize for it.

Unless, of course, Krugman knows something about the yawning boy incident that the rest of us don't know. As he would say, "here's the really interesting part" -- my own digital frame-by-frame forensic analysis of the video reveals a man standing behind the boy, pulling a string attached to the back of the boy's neck.

Of course, we're being told by the New York Times that the man, as funny as he is, was edited into that picture. So on to more serious matters.

In the same Friday column Krugman takes another shot at CNN, in this case following up on a shot he took at the network in his previous Tuesday column. This time it's a serious accusation. As Krugman Truth Squad member Matthew Hoy puts it, "Krugman claims that the Bush administration somehow 'got' to CNN...a New York Times columnist has called several of the network's journalists liars." But as you'll see, it's Krugman who is lying, and who is willing to shamelessly distort quotations to do it.

On Tuesday Krugman wrote,

"...other journalists apparently remain ready to be used. On CNN, Wolf Blitzer told his viewers that unnamed officials were saying that Mr. Clarke "wants to make a few bucks, and that [in] his own personal life, they're also suggesting that there are some weird aspects in his life as well."

Wolf Blitzer shot back the same day, saying on air:

Last Wednesday, while I was debriefing our senior White House correspondent, John King, I asked him if White House officials were suggesting there were some weird aspects to Richard Clarke's life...I was not referring to anything charged by so-called unnamed White House officials as alleged today by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. I was simply seeking to flesh out what Bush National Security Council spokesman Jim Wilkinson had said on this program two days earlier."

Then in Friday's column, Krugman replied to Blitzer,

"...here's a fuller quote, just to remove any ambiguity: 'What administration officials have been saying since the weekend, basically, that Richard Clarke from their vantage point was a disgruntled former government official, angry because he didn't get a certain promotion. He's got a hot new book out now that he wants to promote. He wants to make a few bucks, and that his own personal life, they're also suggesting there are some weird aspects in his life.'

"Stung by my column, Mr. Blitzer sought to justify his words, saying that his statement was actually a question."

First, note that at no point here does Krugman assert that anything about Clarke's personal life has actually been made public as the result of anything Blitzer might have been referring to. If anything, he should be congratulating Blitzer on not passing on smears from the administration, rather than excoriating him for having been "used."

Second, it's a stunning bit of hypocrisy for Krugman to offer the "fuller quote, just to remove any ambiguity." Tom Maguire on the Just One Minute blog points out that his "fuller quote" left out the final sentence of what Krugman falsely characterized as Blitzer's "statement" -- a sentence that makes it perfectly clear that Blitzer was indeed asking a question of CNN White House correspondent John King:

"Is that the sense that you're getting, speaking to a wide range of officials?"

It was a question. Not a statement, as Krugman claims. And don't kid yourself that Krugman didn't know the whole context. He wouldn't have even had to go to the transcript of Blitzer's March 24 show to get the whole quote: it was on the site of the ultra-liberal blogger who calls himself "Atrios," which Krugman has said that he reads.

 And wait till you hear King's answer (which neither Krugman nor Atrios dared to quote):

"None of the senior officials I have spoken to here talked about Mr. Clarke's personal life in any way."

The New York Times' "Guidelines on Integrity" state that quotes must assure that "the intent of the subject has been preserved." But I have not the slightest hope that this egregious distortion of Blitzer's intent will ever be acknowledged or corrected, even under the new columnist corrections policy announced two weeks ago by editorial page editor Gail Collins.

No, Krugman will continue to smear without fear the Bush administration, CNN, and whomever else he wishes -- all the while claiming that it is they who are doing the smearing.

Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 2:07 AM | link