{"id":23,"date":"2002-09-09T09:04:06","date_gmt":"2002-09-09T17:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2002\/09\/09\/how-to-misquote-an-editorial-101\/"},"modified":"2002-09-09T09:04:06","modified_gmt":"2002-09-09T17:04:06","slug":"how-to-misquote-an-editorial-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=23","title":{"rendered":"How to Misquote an Editorial 101"},"content":{"rendered":"

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Credit where credit is due – Bruce R. has now edited his post to add in a link to the Toronto Star<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Flit often provides thoughtful<\/a>
\n conservative commentary. In
\n this post, however<\/a>, Bruce R. is actually dishonest. He says he’s critiquing
\n articles in "Canada’s largest newspaper" – but he doesn’t provide
\n the name of the newspaper, or any links. Maybe that’s just carelessness on his
\n part – but it’s awfully convenient. It turns out that his quoting is less-than-honest.<\/p>\n

Here is Bruce’s summary of the newspaper’s editorial:<\/p>\n

\n

The paper’s daily editorial sympathizes with Toronto’s Muslim community,
\n which suffered through having a Mississauga learning centre’s windows smashed
\n by vandals last Sept. 15 for some reason. Toronto has seen a "surge in
\n hate crimes" in the last year, it writes, without giving evidence, and
\n criticizes non-Muslim Canadians for being "small minded… rock throwing
\n vandals."<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Geez, that’s pretty harsh. But readers who managed to track down the
\n actual editorial<\/a> (which came, by the way, from the Toronto Star<\/em>) found a
\n different message:<\/p>\n

\n

Such acts – and the small-minded attitudes that drive them – diminish
\n us all. […] Muslims should know the heart of this city and this country
\n isn’t the rock-tossing vandal. Rather, it’s the political and community leaders
\n like Prime Minister Jean Chrétien who spoke out against the intolerance
\n directed at Muslims, saying racist acts "have no place in Canada."<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So where Bruce R. saw a statement that all non-Muslem Canadians are "rock
\n throwing vandal[s]," the editorial said the exact opposite; Canada is represented
\n by folks like non-Muslim Chrétien, who stand up against bigotry. At what
\n point does misquoting become lying?<\/p>\n

UPDATE: I looked up another Flit-cited article. According to Bruce R., "Michele
\n Landsberg writes of how Afghan women still live in misogyny, which makes the
\n whole war on terrorism a failure."<\/p>\n

First of all, Bruce R. must realize that Landsberg’s
\n article<\/a> – which is a good update on the situation in Afghanistan, by the
\n way – spends paragraph after paragraph outlining the sins of various Afghan
\n groups. Like other articles, this puts the lie to his claim that Sunday’s Toronto
\n Star<\/em> doesn’t have "a single criticism of anyone but the United States."\n<\/p>\n

Second, Ms. Landsberg doesn’t discuss the "whole war on terrorism."
\n She does say the campaign in Afghanistan has been "bungled," but cites
\n many more reasons than Flit admits:<\/p>\n

\n

If Bush carries out his war on Iraq, we had better pray that he doesn’t
\n bungle the job as disastrously as he has in Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden
\n is still undiscovered, the Al Qaeda network is said to be shipping vast amounts
\n of gold to new hiding places, the country remains in ruins, the people face
\n mass starvation, known criminals among the Northern Alliance are ensconced
\n in government, and the situation of women has changed only marginally. One
\n of the two women in cabinet, Dr. Sima Samar, has already been hounded from
\n office by Islamic conservatives.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

She also reports that "In a town west of Kabul, the local Taliban has
\n just blown up a girls’ school and vowed to kill any woman who goes to school
\n or work."<\/p>\n

The stated goals of invading Afghanistan were, if I recall, getting Bin Laden,
\n dismantling al Qaeda, and freeing the people of Afghanistan (especially women)
\n from radical Islamic tyranny. That not one of these goals has been fully accomplished
\n is a legitimate criticism; especially since many conservatives are declaring
\n the invasion of Afghanistan to have been a complete success. Logically, there
\n are three possibilities: either 1) the stated goals were met and the invasion
\n was a success; 2) the stated goals were not sincere goals and the invasion –
\n measured by some other set of goals – was a success, or 3) the stated goals
\n were not met, and the invasion was therefore not a total success.<\/p>\n

Number 1) is clearly not true. I don’t know if the truth is number 2 or 3 (I
\n suspect it’s 2 – the way conservatives have so suddenly lost their concern for
\n the plight of Afghan women suggests that it was never a sincere concern for
\n most of them), but in either case criticism is legitimate, and doesn’t necessarily
\n represent irrational anti-Americanism, as Bruce R. implies.<\/p>\n

.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Credit where credit is due – Bruce R. has now edited his post to add in a link to the Toronto Star. Flit often provides thoughtful conservative commentary. In this post, however, Bruce R. is actually dishonest. He … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}