No evidence, no evidence at all

In today's Weekend Journal, there are a number of odd statements in their weekly Cultural Roundup for the Wingnuts.

I have no links, so trust me. Here's a classic from "de gustibus" by Kimberley Strassel.

This week Americans broke out in awed smiles at the news that a feisty woodpecker, thought to have gone extinct in the 1940s, had risen like a phoenix in Arkansas. The jubilation was perfectly apt, but I couldn't help wonder if Dick Cheney was also taking a bow. It was only a few years ago that the vice president was tarred and feathered for his observation that environmentalism is a "personal virtue." Yet if there's a lesson in the rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker, it is that the path to conservation runs straight through the hearts of average Americans.

Excuse me. I have to get something to clean my keyboard. My head just exploded.

She goes on to explain that it was the Nature Conservancy, not those meanies at the Sierra Club, who are responsible for saving the forest in which the ivory-billed woodpecker may (or may not) have been seen. Perhaps so, but I'm pretty sure the Nature Conservancy would argue that the true path to conservation runs straight through stopping the clear cutting of forests, the destruction of wetlands, and ending the building of needless roads in national forests.

Right alongside Strassel's cry of the loon, Jacob Laksin attacks NPR's "On the Media" for its nasty bias and the show's "irresponsibly snide Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield."

Ms. Gladstone nurses a particular distaste for Fox personages, most notably Bill O'Reilly. In February 2003, she sneered, on no compelling evidence, that the Fox pundit was "willing to attack families of the victims of 9/11 in his pursuit of the war." Fair and balanced media criticism this was not.

Jaysus. Can't these people -- or at least the editors -- bother to even pretend to fact check?

In a manner reminiscent of his 2003 verbal attacks, O'Reilly again smeared Glick and distorted his remarks. From the July 20, 2004, edition of FOX News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor:

O'REILLY: But who is this guy, really? Well, on this program, Glick said President [George W.] Bush and his father [former President George H.W. Bush] were responsible for his [Glick's] father's death. He said George W. Bush pulled off a coup to get elected. He implied the U.S.A. itself was a terrorist nation. And he called his father's death at the hands of an Al Qaeda "alleged assassination." He said America itself was responsible for the 9-11 attack because it is an imperialistic, aggressive nation. Glick was dismissed from The Factor because he was completely off the wall. Security actually had to take the guy out of the building, he was that out of control.

Glick never said "President Bush and his father were responsible for his [Glick's] father's death." What Glick did say, on the February 4, 2003, edition of The O'Reilly Factor, was the following: "[O]ur current president now inherited a legacy from his father and inherited a political legacy that's responsible for training militarily, economically, and situating geopolitically the parties involved in the alleged assassination and the murder of my father and countless of thousands of others."

O'Reilly's remark that Glick "implied the U.S.A. itself was a terrorist nation" is also a distortion. In 2003, O'Reilly said to Glick, "I don't think he'd [your father] be equating this country as a terrorist nation as you are." Glick replied, "Well, I wasn't saying that it was necessarily like that. ... What I'm saying is ... is that in -- six months before the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan, starting in the Carter administration and continuing and escalating while Bush's father was head of the CIA, we recruited a hundred thousand radical mujahedeens to combat a democratic government in Afghanistan, the Turaki government."

O'Reilly's claim that "security actually had to take the guy [Glick] out of the building, he was that out of control" is questionable. During the interview, it was O'Reilly who called Glick's views "a bunch of crap"; O'Reilly who repeatedly told Glick to "shut up"; O'Reilly who told Glick, "I'm more angry about it [the September 11 terrorist attacks] than you are"; and O'Reilly who ended the interview by saying, "Cut his mic. I'm not going to dress you down anymore, out of respect for your father." According to Glick, as documented in Outfoxed, "The executive producer and the assistant encouraged me to leave the building because they were, quote, concerned that if O'Reilly ran into me in the hallway, he would end up in jail."

O'Reilly also suggested during the 2003 exchange that Glick's parents would side with O'Reilly and not with Glick: "I'm sure your beliefs are sincere, but what upsets me is I don't think your father would be approving of this. ... [M]an, I hope your mother isn't watching this." O'Reilly also claimed that Glick was "exploiting" the families of the September 11 victims; O'Reilly said, "I've done more for them than you will ever hope to do."

Before leveling charges of bias, make sure you know the (well-publicized) facts, Luskin.