In a withering post on the Investor's Business Daily site [1], conservative journalist Mark Steyn "celebrated" a rare appearance in the New York Times.
In a hostile front-page story last Friday on conservative opposition to Barack Obama's nationwide talk [2] to schoolchildren, reporters James C. McKinley Jr. and Sam Dillon thoroughly botched a comment Steyn had made while guest hosting on the Rush Limbaugh show last week. In IBD, Steyn explained that he said almost the opposite of what the Times claimed he'd said:
On Friday, I had the rare honor of appearing in the pages of the New York Times, apropos President Obama's plans to beam himself into every schoolhouse in the land in the peculiar belief that Generation iPod will find this an enthralling technical novelty. As Times reporters James C. McKinley Jr. and Sam Dillon wrote:
"Mark Steyn, a Canadian author and political commentator, speaking on the Rush Limbaugh show on Wednesday, accused Mr. Obama of trying to create a cult of personality, comparing him to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader."
Steyn then provided the quote of what he actually said about Hussein and Kim Jong Il on Limbaugh's show, a quote the Times was evidently unwilling to track down itself:
Obviously we're not talking about the cult of personality on the Saddam Hussein/Kim Jong Il scale.
The Times corrected the record Tuesday morning in its Corrections box, and also attached the correction to the original story:
An article on Friday about criticism of President Obama's plan to address schoolchildren on Tuesday referred incorrectly to remarks by Mark Steyn, a Canadian author and political commentator, on the Rush Limbaugh show. (The Media Equation column in Business Day on Monday also included the incorrect reference.) Mr. Steyn made extensive reference to Saddam Hussein's cult of personality in Iraqi schools, and said an attempt to create a "cult of personality at grade-school level" should have no place in the United States, but said he was not accusing the president of a "cult of personality on the kind of Kim Jong-il, Saddam Hussein scale." He did not explicitly compare the president to Saddam or the North Korean leader or say that Mr. Obama's efforts were "analagous" to theirs.
In the meantime, await a correction to the Times' correction: It's "analogous," (two o's) not "analagous."