Botched Reporting
When John Kerry announced that he would not run for the Presidency next year, a number of news outlets connected his decision to the "botched joke" that brought widespread criticism from conservatives and military personnel. The MSM are mostly committed to the idea that Kerry's gaffe was indeed a "botched joke," but it's really hard to explain just how Kerry got from a "joke" about President Bush to an apparent slam against our soldiers in Iraq, as the New York Times sheepishly acknowledged in a correction this morning:
An article yesterday about Senator John Kerry’s announcement that he would not seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2008 incorrectly described what he called “a botched joke” he told before the November midterm elections. In telling the joke, which was assailed as an attack on American troops fighting in Iraq, Mr. Kerry not only dropped a word from his prepared remarks, but he also rephrased his opening sentence extensively and omitted a reference to President Bush. Mr. Kerry’s aides said that the prepared text read: “Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.” What he actually said: “You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”
They're still sure there's a joke in there somewhere, of course.
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