Oh good, I'm first!

New York: Howell Raines, at the request of his close friend, 'Bagdad Bob', has been hired by The National Enquirer!

It pays to check ScrappleFace frequently. =)

LOL. I've been to Dover AFB. Not much to look at. Though I did enjoy driving behind the dorms and seeing the large dumpster with the spray-painted message "Hoffa is in here".

The unmitigated gall! I can think of no more reprehensible crime against humanity then to fabricate news stories! Shame on you Mr. Raines! Shame on you Mr Blair! Stay on 'em, Mr Ott, they can't get away with it! Dang varmits.

Let's hope the NYT is not fabricating the story of firing young Mr. Blair. You obviously cannot trust the Times.

I hope Jayson Blair gets a great book deal out of this. He obviously deserves it after committing fraud for over 4 years. He'll probably say that he committed these acts of plagiarism and fabrication to prove how easy it is to fool the Mighty New York Times.

How ironic that they used to work for me and now maybe I will work for them....NO WAY! I gotta reputation to protect.

I had to read this several time before I realised that you were not talking about Tony Blair being a bit dishonest. I my initial outrage was somewhat mitigated when I realised it was only a distant cousin.

Jonah:)

And for the last 6 months Bill O'reilly was right ..something is " very " wrong at The New York Times ...

speaking of twisting news storys hmmm seems I have seen this before..making up a news story..fabracation..do yah think ?? naaahhhh

Could it be....GERALDO? Or was that one also an Urban Legend? Too bad the NYT doesn't have a column for that as well. It is sad that with all the hard work he put into LYING and LONG DISTANCE interviewing, why he didn't just work that hard and be legitimate. It would have taken the same amount of effort. I can see it now: Danny Glover undergoing plastic surgery so that he can play the part of Jayson Blair. Woodward and Bernstein mentoring him on the indemnity and defamation laws. I wonder if he interviewed Deep Throat?

Is Raines the guy that first shared the startling revelation about John Kerry being a Vietnam Veteran?......

or did he break the story about Madonna telling her audience in France that she was ashamed the President is from Michigan?

Or is he the guy from Mission Impossible 2. ( the same one who plays the attorney general on the tv show "The District.?

or did someone lace my catnip with some silly putty?

I always knew Frenchman was a US reporter. didn't know he worked for the Times though.

I'm confused, -----now I don't know what to believe! 'Please Believe' me!

I was feeling sorry for the unemployed Mr. Raines, but I'm sure he'll be fine. Fiction writers will be in steep demand shortly. He has a bright future ahead of him as a speech writer for one of the innumerable Democrat presidential cantidates.

As we are talking about lies, has any of you received news about the weapons of mass destruction ?

Yes, the Frech have them and we're coming in after them, and you. Start digging your bunker toad.

Amazing that even Chiraq and French intelligence (now there's as oxymoron)believed Saddam had WMD. they could have voted against 1441 and said they didn't believe (of course frenchman would have told them please believe) but they agreed Saddam did have them. The frecnh, including frenchman by the wy, wanted to give the UN inspectors 6 more months to find them. But they nly want to give the US two weeks to find them. I guess this is culturally acceptable, because ifyou think about it, it would take a french man 6 months to do what a american man could do in two weeks.

Please Believe.

I'll attribute this to an anonymous source
==================================================

Hey! why get excited about this?

What Blair did is harmless. Blair was just telling the stories his readers wanted to believe.

- Don't you agree with the opinion, 'that reporters don't need to get the facts straight, if they can tell a story that is more appealing to the sensibilities of the reader'?
- Don't we really want to believe the government is inept, and when it isn't - itís corrupt?
- Don't we want to believe all the tragedies in life are from the government's inattention to the suffering of its wards (at least when there are republicans in control of the government)?
- Don't we want to believe the only good government is a charitable government?
- Why rock the boat when things are going so well?
==================================================

Oh thatís right, things are not going so well for the left. Honesty is not a commodity the left deals in.

The above story was made up, but the feeling I get from my chair is that the reason Blair's fabrications didn't get caught is because Blair wrote stories that his editors wanted to believe were true. It made them feel good. It made them feel superior.

- Bergwon

***Please join me as I'm standing (on my back legs---I've got 4 to choose from) and applauding Darth Chef's accurate reply to Frenchman's broken record...DRRRROOONNNNEEE....

WOuld someone smack him upside his head ( like with an old record player when the record's got a booger on it and it keeps repeating). See if there's anything worth listening to in the rest of his "song"....or maybe he considers himself a
(C)rap artist....

Frenchy are you a lonely parrot???

Darth Chef, Too funny! Is Frank J. rubbing off on you?

Is it fiction that Raines and Jayson Blair have both been tapped to act as experts on fictitious reporting during the filming of Michael "Fictitious" Moore new movie "Bush-Basher Nights - Fiction Revisited"? Janeane God-awful-ho' perhaps pretending to play the fictious lead role... script by Timmie & Susan, fictitious patriots

Michael Moore-than-I-ever-wanted-to-hear-from-this-truly-horrendous-person's newest film (9/11) to be financed by Disney via Miramax(gag).

Hmm. Another fictitious 'documentary' financed by a fictitious fantasyland filmed by a fictitious documentary-maker that chronicles fictitious allegations of our "fictitious" President elected by the "fictitious electoral college"

AAAHHHHHHH! Too much fiction!
must. reeaaaad... fact... nowwwww.
Desperately searching for fact. corneas burning!shriveling!
maybe make up a fact.... no, only temporary relief.... going! downhill! faaaassstttt!

Government Cheese
I don't know about that. What campaign would have him? No self-respecting democrat would dare take on the NY Times?

Although the fact that he's black has nothing to do with it. I like black people. Even though I'm a rootin tootin tough as nails Nam Vet who doesn't need a carrier to feel like a big shot and I killed a guy with my hands and teeth you can go to my home page and see me with a little Black Boy!

Weeeell Mr John Kerry the Jury is still out on that. The young man may have more future then you know. I am exploring various opportunities.

And on my page you can find pictures of me with elderly white folk! And I've never killed any Asians!

In all I have read about the Howell Raines, Jayson Blair, New York Times brouhaha, I've yet to hear or see the ultimate and famous question: What did Raines know and when did he know it?

I cant fathom why there is such a stir about something that the Times has done for more than half a century. As if this were the first time that The New York Times has knowingly printed something that the editors knew was patently false, downright misleading, or deliberately wrong. What we have here is the equivalent of a well seasoned prostitute caught in flagrante delicto and screaming about it like a raped virgin. Please!

I guess Mr. Raines thought that after what I did with the Twana Brawley story, that it was alright to tell lies and get away with it. Maybe he wants to run for President someday!

Are you implying that Raines didn't notice because fictional 'anonymous' sources were standard procedure?
Is "All the news that's fit to print" false advertising?

I heard that he applied for a reporters job at a local Indianapolis newspaper, opening up late spring, early summer, but the Senior editor told him as long as he ran the paper, it would never Raine in Indianapolis in the summertime.

Rimshot...

I now look at what I commented above and realize it wasn't that funny and I must have plagiarized someone else.

I get a kick out of this: Blair fabricates stories and gets busted, while editorial censorship and mis/disinformation has run riot, even, and perhaps especially, in the NYT, the official Pentagon mouthpiece.

The rest of the world laughs at the idea of the US "freedom of the press." This, along with the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, have been put in serious jeopardy with the Patriot Act(s).

I agree with Gore Vidal, who says that the US Republic ended with the 2000 "election." Let's put the Blair thing in perspective here.

Correction: Vidal actually said the Republic ended with the 9/11 attacks, and not the 2000 election.

Anyone interested can look at www.democracynow.org for a recording of an interview with Gore Vidal, plus lots of other eye-opening factoids.

This is a vast right-wing conspiracy. It is not Mr. Blair's fault. Its the lack of diversity in our society that caused all of this.

Oops, I think I plagiarized Sen. Clinton.

And, the Iraqi's are really, really happy we are there, the economy is great, and hey, the rest of the world admires the intelligence, integrity, and honesty of the U.S. press.