Following The Irish Times’s withdrawal of my non-quote, the New York Times has now issued a rather more grudging and somewhat disingenuous correction. Unprompted by me, I should say. I rather enjoy the idea of the “newspaper of record”’s records being full of rubbish.
However, way out at the end of the journalism food-chain, the herd of highly trained copyists at American newspapers are still excitedly regurgitating the Times’s original line. From the Greensboro News & Record:
Mark Steyn, a Canadian author and political commentator, charged on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show last week that the president is attempting to create a cult of personality. Steyn went on to compare Obama with Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il.
That’s pretty much how the pre-correction Times had it. But over at the Arizona Daily Wildcat Rachel Leavitt evidently felt it was unbecoming just to cut-and-paste, and decided to rewrite — or, at least, put the words in a different order:
Mark Steyn, a political commentator and Canadian author, compared Obama to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-il.
I rather like that: “A political commentator and Canadian author.” So I’m only Canadian when I’m authoring? Or is ”Canadian” a genre like Southern Gothic or English drawing-room comedy? And what am I when I’m political commentating? Slovene? Uighur?