Bring it, Pattycakes
Welp, I tried to be somewhat polite with Pattycakes here, because he did in fact catch us in an “oopsie.” But now he’s just asking for it:
By the way, let’s not pretend that the new post is honest. It also pretends that the AP’s error was slight — an odd stance, given the fact that the AP recently reported only “slight damage� at one supposedly “destroyed� mosque, and nothing more than a broken window at another supposedly “destroyed� mosque.
Whu-whu-wait. I said that the AP should have run a correction of its initial report, since the language didn’t accurately describe what actually happened. I don’t know what more you want me to say about it. Oh wait, yes I do. You want me to admit that the AP is involved in helping the terrorists.
Also, the AP did not report that the mosques received no damage but a broken window. Let’s read this again:
_ The third, the al-Muhaimin mosque, had shattered windows and holes in the roof, but a closer examination was impossible because the gate of the wall surrounding the structure was locked, the AP reporter found. It is closed, guarded by the Iraqi army and adorned by a picture of the late Shiite cleric father of Muqtada al-Sadr, the anti-American cleric who heads the Mahdi Army.
_ The fourth mosque named in the AP’s original report, the al-Qaqaqa mosque, also known as the al-Meshaheda mosque, has a broken window and is closed, guarded by Iraqi army troops outside and adorned with a picture of al-Sadr’s father. It also has Mahdi Army graffiti scrawled on its side, partially whitewashed over but still readable.
They didn’t report that there was no damage. They reported that they couldn’t determine the extent of any internal damage, and that the only visible damage from the outside was a broken window.
Now, do I agree that it’s incorrect to write that any of these buildings were “destroyed?” Yes, I made that abundantly clear here. However, even Malkin acknowledged in her NY Post piece that all four mosques had come under attack:
One of the mosques identified by the AP, the Nidaa Alah mosque, had been abandoned and vacant at the time it was hit with small-arms fire, say Iraqi and U.S. Army officials. Two of its inside rooms were burned out by a lobbed firebomb, according to an Army report.
Three other mosques in the area – the al Muhaymin, al Mushahiba and Ahbab Mustafa mosques – sustained small-arms fire damage to their exteriors; the Mustafa mosque also had two rooms burned out by a firebomb.
So please, let’s skip the bullshit that one mosque “only had a broken window.” I’m not going to justify the inaccurate language used in the original report, but let’s not pretend that the AP made up this story sitting from their posh hotel balconies, OK?
Also, I love this:
This Sadly No! post continues to say that the word “destroyed� is “a term that appeared in a raw AP feed for approximately 20 minutes, and which was removed before a single story was published.� And Gavin’s post still says: “Above: This AP feed with the imprecise word, ‘destroyed,’ was up for roughly 20 minutes before being supplanted.� I’m sure the careful factcheckers at Sadly, No! will be correcting those erroneous statements posthaste.
Ooooooo, you sure got us! Now we’re going to go back and EDIT THEM SNEAKILY SO IT LOOKS LIKE WE WERE NEVER WRONG!!!! You better get a bunch of screenshots!!!! (Who am I kidding- I’m sure he’s already got them. And I’m sure Ace has a bunch of backup screenshots. And I’m sure they’re checking the IP addresses I post at to make sure that I’m not Glenn Greenwald.)
Predictably, Pattycakes never addresses the major point I raised in my last post on this: namely, that attacks did occur one way or another on all these mosques, and that the two mosques that supposedly received “slight” damage now had pictures of Sadr’s father adorning them. Which is a bit odd, frankly, since they’re supposedly under the control of non-sectarian government forces. I pointed out that this sort of thing seems to fall under this graf in the most recent NIE:
Nonetheless, the term “civil war� accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict, including the hardening of ethno-sectarian identities, a sea change in the character of the violence, ethno-sectarian mobilization, and population displacements.
Now, that’s my take.
I’d be curious, based on the countless hours of research he’s done on this topic, to have Patterico give me his take on what really happened to these Sunni mosques. Because really, if Patty is as dedicated to media accuracy as he claims, he must have a decent theory about what’s really happened here, no? Or is he just about playing gotcha word games with AP articles (and tracking Glenn Greenwalds’ IP address and getting screenshots and generally being a paranoid freak about everything?).
UPDATE: A commenter at Patty’s place gives up the game:
The “destroyed instead of damamged� story is just the tip of the iceberg. We have been overwealmed with “stem cell instead of embryonic stem cell�, “immigrant instead of illegal immigrant� and “youths instead of muslim radicals� stories for decades, and there seems to be little progress toward the truth.
That’s pretty much it for these guys. It’s not about correcting inaccurate reports. It’s about a Conspiracy So Vast involving the media, the Democrats, the ACLU, the French, the Muslims, the… well, let’s just shorten it by saying the 99.999999999999999999% of the world who isn’t as crazy as they are.
Patterico’s a fascist asshole. Give him no quarter.
Oh SHIT the jig is up!
This is a waste of time, but it’s a Saturday afternoon and I have nothing to do. About that Patty commenter:
“destroyed instead of damamged[sic]” = Two different words. Can he tell the difference? No, he doesn’t get it.
“stem cell instead of embryonic stem cell” = What is he saying? What’s the issue? You can put the word embyonic in front of stem cell all you want, that doesn’t change the meaning of the word. It’s still a stem cell. You can add “embryonic” to “stem cell” to specify what type of stem cell it is.
“youths instead of Muslim radicals” = Buh? A youth is a young person. Presumably, a Muslim radical is an Islamist. Right? The words are not interchangable. Muslim radicals can be young. You don’t need to repeat “Muslim radical” 58 times in an article. Sometimes you mix it up with things like “he” and “youth” or “man”.
“immigrant instead of illegal immigrant” = What’s going on here? An illegal immigrant is an illegal immigrant. A legal immigrant is just an immigrant. Illegal modifies the word immigrant and signifies that the immigrant is in a country illegally. Again, not the same thing.
I thought the wingnuts were evil but clever enough to play dumb. I thought they understood the English language. Apparently, they attach a personal emotional meaning to non-political words. Their ignorance causes them to believe in conspiracies. That’s disturbing. It’s not that they’re just stupid, they don’t understand.
I guess they want other people to use an inordinate amount of adjectives to emphasize a political point they are trying to make.
Oh man, I can’t BELIEVE they’re still on about something THIS stupid. And I can’t believe you’re still giving them any attention on it. That’s all they want, dammit, don’t turn this big blogo-circle-jerk into an all-out orgy. Let it go, man, let it go…
Brad, Brad, Brad.
Never wrestle with a pig. You just get dirty, and the pig likes it.
Alex- it’s too late, man. I’ve been sucked into the cult. ALL YOUR JAMIL HUSSEIN ARE BELONG TO US!!
Overwealmed. Hmmm. [Goes to Webster. Nuthin. Dictionary dot com? Nope. Asks neighbor who speaks fluent wingnut. Just a puzzled look.]
I guess that IS some kind of major conspiracy to fool those dudes by overwealming them. Guess ya got me with that one. I’ll go quiatlly….
mikey
Whoa, my comment was pretty long. I actually spent a few minutes typing that……
I need to find something to do. I’ll go play some video games.
So long as we’re being precise, the AP certainly never said the building was…
“damamged.”
Duh? And that’s why I wasn’t prepared to give ground on the grammar argument, and why in fact I don’t agree with you that it was an invalid argument. It might have been an invalid argument if the purpose of anything written on the right about the AP or Jamil Hussein were ever to just find out the truth about what’s going on in Iraq. It might have been an invalid argument if the initial report were the only report the AP issued, if they made no later revisions or clarifications. It might have been an invalid argument if any of this debate had ever hinged on anything but semantics–but it’s been over two months now and it has thus far never been shown to be about anything but semantics, or rather the playing of semantics in order to prove how much the Associated Press worships terrorists.
If it were about fact-finding, why didn’t Michelle and Bryan visit all the ostensibly destroyed mosques? Why stop at one? In fact, let me play my own version of wingnut fact-finding: How do we really know Malkin’s team didn’t visit all the mosques? Maybe they did visit all of them and just neglected to report the damage they saw there! How do we know they’re not suppressing unfavorable evidence? After all, they’re biased too! See how quick that gets crazy? Of course you do.
Anyway. If they want to play semantics, you bet it’s fair for me and others to point out when they don’t even get the semantics right.
Patterico played you pretty good. He has a pattern:
1. Post easily refutable bombastic bullshit.
2. When someone on the left objects, implore everyone to be reasonable about this for a moment. Put on Mr. Hyde mask.
3. Upon receiving the least concession to your argument, immediately remove mask to reveal . . . Dr. Crazytime!
4. Commence augmenting easily refutable bombastic bullshit argument with more bombastic bullshit. Don’t forget to name-call!
5. Bwa-ha-ha that your bombastic bullshit is no longer quite as easy to refute as it once was, because someone at S,N! conceded one teensy tiny point of it.
I call Patterico stupid all the time, but that’s because I’m lazy. When I’m not feeling lazy (and when I have absolutely nothing better to think about), I think of Patterico as a fairly sharp guy whose particular talent is conning his opponents into helping him move the goalposts.
This Sadly No! post continues to say…
It looks like Patterico didn’t bother to read through the comments.
Perhaps the commenter was using the archaic form of “weal,” which is a small, burning, swollen patch on the skin. I mean, it’s possible that some youthful, illegal stem cells sprinkled some pox-dust on him from above, and therefore has indeed been “over-weal(m)ed.” Let’s not be so quick to judge.
Nobody cares about this story except a tiny corner of the blogopshere. It’s a total wank. I’m done with it.
I think of Patterico as a fairly sharp guy whose particular talent is conning his opponents into helping him move the goalposts.
Fair point. I will be more careful about this stuff in the future (but hell, it’s a Saturday afternoon, and it’s cold outside).
Also, I admit that Patterico does argue better’n’most of these guys.
Oh SHIT the jig is up!
And gone!
Isn’t PateCo the guy who oh-so-coyly tried to play the “how about I outya” game with Tbogg? IIRC, Pate is also one of the Klonopin Cockslap’s biggest fans. Who gives two asses of rat what he thinks? Go back to kicking Dan Riehl around. At least he’s colorfully stupid.
Well, sure. I’m betting he’s not a half-bad attorney. But with stuff like this, all it means is that he’s better at trolling than your average troll.
Whiskey’ll warm you up faster than arguing with Patterico. Or so I’ve been [hic] told.
Tediousest Blog Spat Ever.
*AHEM*. Bummer.
[Looks around. Kicks at thread.] Nope, it’s dead.
[Mopes some more….Suddenly brightens]
Hey, I’ve got an idea! Who ya got in the big game?
mikey
Bring on the Coach Dave and Pastor Swank. I just made a big pot of pasta and am in the mood for some spaghetti pushin’ and pullin’.
And more importantly, now that I think about it and theres plenty of time to run for groceries, what kinda snax are you making?
mikey
Cue bwa-ha-ha alarm: I mixed up my Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde reference.
I blame the doctors I have worked with over the years for forming the “doctor = crazy” association in my mind.
I also blame whiskey.
Oh, Mikey, puleeze, not the stupor bowl! Although I do like tail gate food, and if one drinks enough beer, and hangs out in the room where the game is not on and only emerges for the commercials…. Oh, OK. What ya cookin’ up for teh game?
go Bears!
I look at it like this, Candy. The damn thang comes on late sunday afternoon, it’s not like I’ll be doing a whole lot else. Plus, I’m up $550 on Peyton and the colts so far in the playoffs, with $300 on tommorow. I’m going to do a big bowl of guacamole, turkey chili and cornbread. You gotta remember, out here it’ll be over by 7. Not like on Brad/Gavin’s coast, where it runs right through dinnertime…
mikey
Wait, TWO comment posts that mention Pattycakes and NO MARIO?????
WTF? Truly, we are doomed.
Patterico is either good or naive. I’m tempted to say the latter, but who knows or cares. But yeah, he, and Malkin and the rest, managed to pull a real whopper on all of us for a while. This Imaginary Jamil and the absolutely undamaged mosques thing is a hoax device. It’s so staggeringly stupid that it’s hard to recognize. We had been giving these folk too much credit, assuming they had basic reading skills.
I just really wonder, how wrong do they have to be before they’ll admit it?
In a way, the Jamil thing is the whole invasion in miniature.
I just really wonder, how wrong do they have to be before they’ll admit it?
These are the 29% who still back CheneyCo’s disaster in Iraq, insist that we are bringing the Iraqis Freedomâ„¢ (except when they’re insisting we should turn ’em to glass), and are happy that the shrub is using the Constitution to wipe his ass.
So there is no limit to the amount of wrong they’ll indulge themselves in, and they’ll never admit it.
Just place to one side the fact that this is transparently another fundamentally dishonest attempt to remove what should be a debate about policy into the realms of conspiracy theory and thence to the realm of bare semantics.
Even at the bare level of a semantic dispute, this whole spastic wingnut stupid orgy relies on mistaking a claim made in reported speech for an assertion simpliciter. This is too goddamn dumb even to engage. Further, it’s not funny.
Not even a little, in the “pounding head against wall from aggravation way” you might expect to find humor here.
Let it die. If the esteemed pinhead crew want to spin msm fairy tales that only borderline illiterates can find compelling, fuck ’em.
The Brief History of Patterico: ‘Look, don’t join that line of people taking chunks outta my ass unless you’ve flossed, okay, because even though I’m bruised, bleeding and pathetically trying to crawl away, I’m going to notice the broccoli in your teeth and point it out on my blog.’
To paraphrase what I wrote at his place before I got banned.
Patterico suffers from a syndrome common to many lawyers, particularly younger/newer ones: the compulsion to argue minutiae and literal exactitude without regard for the big picture. This sort of lawyer, when negotiating a contract, for example, will spend hours (not to mention hundreds of dollars of his client’s money) arguing over whether there is a difference between “including” and “including but not limited to.” Their goal is to score more points than the other guy, even when those points are not relevant to anything of importance. I should know — I used to be a lawyer like that. And I know that the only cure for it is time and experience.
Yer right, cs. I was just stunned to realize that, even as stupid as I thought they were, I was giving them too much credit. Lesson learned, at least.
NY Times now: Truck Bomb Levels Baghdad Market, Killing at Least 130
Let’s send Malkin back to make sure the ground is level. It’s safe to that assume not even she would say a crater makes the headline wrong, right?
Link
Dan Someone, you’re exactly right. Here’s a parallel distinction from philosophy. One of the great French philosophers of the 20th C, Deleuze, said that what we have to worry about are not errors, but stupidity (the inability to tell what is important from what isn’t). S,N made an error in saying that the AP feed was never picked up and printed. Patterico et al. are stupid for thinking Jamilgate is important.
Patty banned me from posting on his blog because he couldn’t take the heat.
Patty banned me from posting on his blog because he couldn’t take the heat.
David E., you called him a “fucking liar”.
Not to mention a “low-life fascist shill “
You were trying to get banned, and you succeeded. Now you can tell others how mean Patterico was to you.
I don’t get it, Bradley. You can’t get banned here even if you exhibit congenital homocidal disease….
mikey
No shit. We had a pie lover on here who called everyone and their cat worse things than that, by many degrees.
there is not a single site on the right (with the vague exception of confused john cole) which allows all comers to argue both sides. it just doesn’t work with authoritarian low fascist culture.
on this side, we just laugh at idiots while easily refuting their bullshit.
anyway, every second we allow human scum like malkin and patterico (and dude, i hope you try to prosecute me someday, hell it makes me want to commit a crime in his district just to fucking go up against the guy) to have any oxygen, we forget…
what. oh, that a family today in iraq lost its son, its daughter, its brother, the love of its life. that an american soldier lost a limb today, maybe two, and his life is fucked. i let my hate bleed out here at lamentable, no!, but i can’t help it–i so loathe these hateful picayune motherfuckers its hard not to want to leap through the computer and…(well, you’ve all played half life or halo, right? i’m thinking rocket launcher, though a good plasma weapon always works)
real human lives are destroyed EVERY GODDAMN day in Iraq. people i know. people i don’t. people i wish i knew. people i could love, people i could hate. and every day michelle malkin spews poison. i think unhappily, notsomuch needs to do a bit of a rethink. the snark has been spewed, and to be honest,
we’ve jumped the snark.
So let’s recap. Please forgive me for using up all this comment space. I’d like to get it straight.
Townhall quotes the report containing the word “destroyed”, and says that “There are no links because I got these off the raw AP wire”, implying that the report containing the word “destroyed” didn’t make it off the raw wire. This implication is incorrect, but given that the point of the Townhall article wasn’t focused on the issue of the word “destroyed”, let alone whether or not it made it off the raw wire, one assumes it was an accidental oversight.
Meanwhile Malkin Thing uses the misreport that the mosques were “destroyed” as an argument undermining Jamil Hussein’s credibility, saying “Hussein claimed and AP reported as destroyed, torched and burned and [blown] up are all still standing”. This issue with the word “destroyed” attributed Jamil also features in her blog posts on the matter. When provoked by Sadly No regarding the importance of the word “destroyed”, she directs them to the Townhall website.
Sadly No reads the Townhall website, and is told two things by it. First, that the word “destroyed” appeared in only the first raw wire report, and its removal coincided with Jamil’s report. This undermines Malkin Thing’s arguments above. Second, that the first report never made it off the raw wire into a proper article. Sadly No repeats this latter is an error in their response, but note that it is the first observation is the one that matters here, even if the second gives it that extra snicker-value.
Patty reads Sadly No, and the snickering provokes him to not-so-politely try to correct their error. However – and this part doesn’t make a lot of sense to me – rather than correcting their error by simply pointing to an article containing it on the web, thus demonstrating that it had in fact made it off the raw wire and to the general public, he takes a screen shot of the raw feed (?) in Lexis-Nexis, adding “The cited story is not on the Web…”.
Given that Patty hadn’t actually undermined Sadly No’s cause for snickering, but seemingly supported it, their response is as you’d expect.
Patty responds again, but this time he actually points to websites that have cut-and-paste the first raw story, correcting the error Sadly No was repeating from Townhall. Note however that this contradicts his earlier “the cited story is not on the web”, which is why the reasoning behind his responses don’t make much sense to me.
In response to Patty, Sadly No admits the error, but reminds readers out that the point of the argument — that the word “destroyed” is not attributable to Jamil and may in fact have been corrected by his report — remains. We now await Patty’s response with baited breath.
Although I’m enjoying this comedy of errors, I fear that the much-needed logic-checking of Malkin Thing’s argument is going to get lost in a morass of side-issues. Even if it finally gets concluded that the word “destroyed” was not sourced from Jamil, or better yet, that he had in fact corrected it, will Malkin Thing ever issue an apology? Will her readers ever see the record corrected? This reversal of the right-wing narrative against AP is the punchline of this black comedy. Hail Eris.
One of the great French philosophers of the 20th C, Deleuze
MC Rhizome in the S,N! rhizouse!
… no, the more I think about it, the more I’m sure that this whole thing can’t really be that stupid and simple. Seeing as Sadly No got deprogrammed before I arrived to the party, I’m going to go ask Patty directly.
Note to self:
Deal lots of dope in Patterico’s jurisdiction. This guy couldn’t get a cup of coffee right.
p.s. Don’t get a suntan or a beard. It’s all gravy afterward.
I think that’s a good plan, Dudack. When you get caught with a couple of pounds of it, you can argue endlessly that is is ‘moonijuana’, not marijuana, and then absolutely refuse to give any credence whatsoever to lab results or any other scientific evidence to the contrary. I admit that the brainless quibbling might wear you down after awhile, but as long as you just stick to your story they will become addled by the dull, pounding, repitition of the word ‘moonijana’ and begin to focus instead on passing legislation to make this ‘new and serious threat’ illegal.
Patterico, to be fair, I think is suffering from advocate’s disease. He got a JD, and feels affinity with cultural conservatives. So, he over-represents them, despite the fact that he’s actually not as dumb as he acts.
I say this not to defend him or anyone else. I just think he behaves in something closer to advocate mode online than he may in real life, and is really not as stupid as he sometimes sounds. I’m not sure that makes any difference, especially considering his obsession with outing and clan-denial (classic crap from criminal attorneys that attack symptom and not cause), but at least he’s not dumb.
Fishbane: If he’s got a JD, then he shouldn’t have any problems understanding the logical implications of what I’m getting at. And if that’s the case, then his refusal to answer a straight question (and clarified in comment 83) looks more motivated by the inconvenient implications of the answer than because I hurt his feelings when I referred to him as “Patty”. But the night is still young! He should be given at least 24 hours to prove me wrong.
Just one thing worries me, though. Do you think he might do a Google and discover what my name means? Considering that I called him “Patty”, if he starts calling me “elf-nerd”, I fear that I will have no choice but to endure it.
(This is in response to this comment. It’s a bit lengthy, but related to the topic, and as this thread is dead anyway, I hope no one minds me putting it here).
DRJ: Almost. I agree with 1 and 2. Three and 4 are kind of orthogonal to the point I think I’m trying to make. I’m more interested in what looks like a hasty conclusion, if not an outright error of logic, in Malkin’s work, and the “left” and “right” blogospheres talking at cross-purposes about it. But for the record, I do agree with 3, and share your uncertainty about the issue in square brackets. Point 4 and the ‘Jamil Hussein was a credible source because…’ is a too firm a conclusion for my liking, simply because I think that we would have to cover a lot more ground to get that far. I might venture ‘Jamil Hussein was not a non-credible source because…’, but what I mean by that needs elaboration.
First, if it’s not fresh in your mind, reread Malkin’s article. Recall that this is her response after her first charge, that Jamil is not credible because he doesn’t exist, had been refuted my the MOI. I think its fair to say that this article is a defence of her reputation.
Note two things in the article. First, that her article is titled “DESTROYED – NOT”, which implies that the issue of them being “not destroyed” is pretty important to her argument. This is supported by the content, where she (1) attributes that specific error to Hussein, and (2) interprets the fact that they are “still standing” with respect to his credibility. To quote her opening paragraph:
Now, let’s try some hypotheticals, incrementally stripping back from the hypothetical that would best support Michelle’s position, and see what we could reasonably conclude at each level. Here I’m only interested in one question: is it fair to attribute “destroyed” to Jamil? It seems like a good place to start, considering it’s prominence in her article. Amongst these hypotheticals, you should be able to recognise the questions that I put to Patterico.
Let’s start with the best case for Michelle, that somewhere there’s an article that says “Jamil said the mosques were destroyed”. If that were the case, I would concede that Michelle has a very good point, congratulate her for being so observant as to pick up the error, even risking her own life going to Iraq to set the record straight.
Now let’s pretend that we find no such clear statement, but we do find instances where Jamil is quoted as a source in the same report that uses “destroyed” to describe the mosques. I would say that Michelle has good reason to attribute “destroyed” to Jamil, and that the AP has some explaining to do. I would again concede my error, and leave it at that.
Let’s go another step, and imagine that “destroyed” is not only not attributed to Jamil, but that the word appears in reports before Jamil was quoted as a source. As far as I can tell, this we where we stand now. Is it possible that Jamil was the source for “destroyed” in the first version, but wasn’t named? Well they named him later on, so that seems like an odd thing to do*. It seems more likely that “destroyed” came from some other, an earlier source*. On its own, this doesn’t seem like enough evidence linking Jamil and “destroyed” to make it the centrepiece of a NYP article. If this case didn’t have the history it did, I think I wouldn’t be the only one to say it was a strange thing for Michelle to jump on, especially without some other supporting evidence linking Jamil to “destroyed”.
We’ve got limited resources, but one piece of evidence that would support him being the source for “destroyed” is if AP continued using “destroyed” after talking to him. At the very least, it suggests that he didn’t dispute or clarify that description*. Then we would be back at one level above. However, if the opposite happened, if the word “destroyed” disappeared after he was sourced, wouldn’t that support the idea that Hussein was not the source for the word “destroyed”, and may have in fact corrected the record as later sources often do*? If that were the case, then Michelle would be on dubious ground. Given the WaPo follow-up, it’s not an unreasonable question.
Now I know you Yanks don’t like people that admit their uncertainties, as the leaders you choose for yourselves suggests :), but that’s not my style. So here’s some potential holes in my argument that I think deserve attention.
First, I arrived to this party pretty late in the game, and have spent nowhere near the time that you guys have. It’s entirely possible that the answers to the questions I put to Patterico are not only widely-known, but answer in a way that totally supports Michelle’s argument. Believe it or not, that’s exactly why I crossed the aisle to ask someone on the “right”. You have every incentive to reply “duh, stupid liberal” and show me where I got it wrong. And I want you to. I need that test, at the very least, before I feel comfortable even beginning to assert the kind of arguments that I have sketched above. So I eagerly await an answer to my questions.
Second, I’m not a journo, and my occupation is as far from opinion-writer as you can get. Consequently, I don’t know for certain how to interpret changes in the raw feed. The WaPo says that the feed “was updated several times as more information became available”, and that’s how I’ve interpreted it, but I’ve also indicated it where it comes in with a ‘*’ above.
Finally, I’m aware that at its extreme, my narrative implies that Michelle desperately stitched together a flimsy argument to defend herself from the humiliation of getting the Jamil story completely wrong. This is an inflammatory thing to say, and I’d want a lot of evidence before making a claim like that. Like the AP, I’m a little perplexed by why she fixated on this, which makes me all the more wary. On the other hand, if I’m right, then her own NYP article says something about “Imad al-Hasimi” that makes me very nervous. Given that this is even a possibility, I’d expect a much more conservative approach to her work than she seems to apply; certainly more than an insignificant microbe like me would use.
He got a JD, and feels affinity with cultural conservatives.
Hey now. I have a JD and I feel absolutely no such affinity. Believe me, there are plenty of lawyers out there who actually understand the importance of logic and context/relevance.
fishbane: “Patterico, to be fair, I think is suffering from advocate’s disease. He got a JD, and feels affinity with cultural conservatives. So, he over-represents them, despite the fact that he’s actually not as dumb as he acts.”
Nah, he’s a Texas guy who grew up playing golf, and then he goes and lives in the most fern-bar, conservative part of LA. Ordinarly I’d say he’s one of those people who’re smart enough on the mechanics but whoe can’t think past the tribal loyalties, but he’s also an infantile little dick, so he doesn’t deserve the credit of putting his problems off to nurture.
Hey now. I have a JD and I feel absolutely no such affinity. Believe me, there are plenty of lawyers out there who actually understand the importance of logic and context/relevance.
It wasn’t my intent to imply that having a JD leads one to conservatism; sorry if I misled.
Patterico, er, Pat Frey, is a true asshole. The fact that he is on the public dole, er, payroll, is doubly appalling.
Please don’t be lead down his rabbit hole. Drop all engagement with this alcoholic scumbag.
Let him go on prosecuting — until, of course, he switches to the other side.
I love pie…really I do…pie, pie, pie all day long.