George Will

Serial puppy molester?

This by George Will in today's WaPo caught my eye as I was skimming the papers this morning.

Wednesday's Post reported that at a White House reception for newly elected members of Congress, Webb "tried to avoid President Bush," refusing to pass through the reception line or have his picture taken with the president. When Bush asked Webb, whose son is a Marine in Iraq, "How's your boy?" Webb replied, "I'd like to get them [sic] out of Iraq." When the president again asked "How's your boy?" Webb replied, "That's between me and my boy."

Something seemed very…off, but I was in a huge hurry and didn’t think about it again until I read this by Greg Sergeant at the TPM café, who puts his finger right on Will’s wriggly lump of prose and calls it by its proper name.

A lie.

Here’s a snip:

See what happened? Will omitted the pissy retort from the President that provoked Webb. Will cut out the line from the President where he said: "That's not what I asked you." In Will's recounting, that instead became a sign of Bush's parental solicitiousness: "The president again asked `How's your boy?'"

Will's change completely alters the tenor of the conversation from one in which Bush was rude first to Webb, which is what the Post's original account suggested, to one in which Webb was inexplicably rude to the President, which is how Will wanted to represent what happened.
…

Read the entire thing here.

So is George Will a serial puppy molester?

I have no way of knowing, but to achieve my “journalistic goal” I omitted the inconvenient words “is not a” from this sentence:

“George Will is not a serial puppy molester.”

Which, in accordance with George Will’s New and Improved Roolz of Journalisming, is apparently what we’re doing now.

So wheeeeeeee!