We know D.C. Get our free newsletter to stay in the know.
I WAS REALLY GLAD TO see your piece putting down both Rush Limbaugh and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (“News Bites,” 10/21). Imagine quibbling over how many Native Americans lived in the U.S. before Columbus. Who cares whether European settlers killed off a few thousand or a few million? It reminds me of the debate between the people behind the Holocaust Museum and the Holocaust revisionists. Why would anyone care whether Hitler killed a few thousand Jews or 6 million? We’ll never know the exact number anyhow. I’m glad to see you had the courage to just pronounce a pox on both their houses.
The same is true with your discussion of the paper assignment at Chelsea Clinton’s school. So what if it wasn’t something totally nonsensical, but rather a topic that might require serious insight and reflection. (The counterparts of Chelsea’s teachers in Germany probably assign papers about whether Germans should feel guilty about the Holocaust.) It’s not as though these teachers are wealthy or powerful people who have independent access to the media to correct the error. Nor would they have the resources to hire lawyers to press libel suits. So if you made a slight error in making them sound like fools, why should any serious person care?
We should all be thankful that Washington City Paper has an editor with the courage to so casually dismiss any concern for accuracy when dealing with people without power. That will show those pathetic PC whiners.
Adams Morgan