Pacific Views

Misquoted in the NY Times

I guess you've really arrived when the Paper of Record misquotes you ;) A statement attributed to me was printed in their article on the Sleepless Summer tour, when it was actually a quote from Garance Franke-Ruta, who was good enough to be interviewed after the rally in Seattle.

Here's the offending misattribution, from an article entitled "In a Long Presidential Race, Dean Sprints" by Jodi Wilgoren: "He's not running a campaign, he's running a movement," wrote Natasha C., one of four people the Dean campaign invited to chronicle the trip on their Web logs. "These are protest-size crowds, these are not politics-size crowds, and that's the critical difference."

Mind you, I wish I'd said that. But wishing doesn't make it so. Thanks to Bev for emailing me a copy of the article, I've given up bothering to read websites that make me register to get in.

Update: Ha! It gets better. The misquote in the Times was perpetuated in an irritating Town Hall column by Emmett Tyrell:

..."He's not running a campaign, he's running a movement," writes Natasha C. on the Dean Web site, if the New York Times is to be believed. "These are protest-size crowds, these are not politics-size crowds, and that makes a critical difference," Ms. C. asseverates. ...

Asseverates!? Good god, man, I've never asseverated anything in all my life. And you can quote me on that.

The best part is that any wingnut wanting to use this to point fingers at the Times is going to find that several fingers will be pointing back to Mr. Tyrell, who clearly never bothered to look for the source material of this quote. Which is hilarious in light of his skepticism that the New York Times can be believed at all. This is way more funny than misreading (and I guess I could have made it more clear) which of us was the interviewee.

Posted by natasha at August 27, 2003 04:30 PM | TrackBack