The Retractable Brain

[elfs]

Every once in a while, it's necessary to spank yourself for the mistakes you've made.

Let's go through them.

It looks as if the Mitt Romney video is actually several months old, back when they were both slugging it out for the nomination. Mitt has been mum on the subject of the McCain candidacy ever since the Republican National Convention.

While there have been a number of articles about "push-polling," it looks more like this is a test case for push-polling. The poll takes too long; they're earnestly collecting data, rather than just trying to misinform voters. But it looks like they're collecting data on which negative message about Obama is most effective with certain kinds of voters.

And we should be fair to Sarah Palin. We do not have any reason to believe that she has ever read Westbrook Pagler, the anti-Jewish writer who once wished both Roosevelt and Kennedy dead. Indeed, we should have every reason to suspect any claim that she's ever read any book whatsoever. That line was written by a McCain scriptwriter, who probably borrowed it from Pat Buchanan who, for all his faults, does have the intellectual curiosity to have read Westbrook Pagler.

Comments

[blaisepascal]

Since no one else has done so yet...

Thank you for being ethical about it and posting corrections to past commentary with the same (or higher) visibility as the original errors. Especially when the errors didn't originate with you, but you found out about them anyway.

I wish more media sources would do the same.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Well, the Jewish Republican Caucus has 'fessed up to being the pollers, and God only knows what they're going to do with their info. And hey, my third paragraph was a total snark anyway.

Only the Romney one was really a valid retraction, but wait until you read what he did say today. It comes to down to "I was for teaching kindergarteners how to recognize and report sexual abuse before I was against it."

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

Keep in mind that she may have read Pagler after all. She worked for Buchannan during the 90's.