Right-Wing Spin (What a Shocker)

An alert reader sends the following:

I just thought you might be interested to know that you column available

this week is being quoted in a Conservative New Hampshire news letter called

the Union Leader. Their article can also be accessed from the Republican

National Committee website as part of their research information for

delegates. Reporter Bernadette Malone has turned your off-hand refferral to

rumors pf prostitutes attempting to spread STDs into an active part of the

protests and over all conspiracy of Democrates and “Republican-haters.”

Instead of saying STDs she says AIDS and then later refers to protesters as

“AIDS-spreaders.” I can’t wait until this hyphenated neo-con jargon begun by

Bush goes out of style. So yeah, I thought that was nice and that you might

be interested to know how your words are being used.

Indeed, there is a major difference between what I wrote and what the right-wing Manchster Union-Leader (a daily newspaper, not a newsletter) said I wrote:

I wrote:

Rejecting ex-mayor Ed Koch’s call to “make nice” with the party that used the deaths of 2,801 New Yorkers–most of them Democrats–for everything from tax cuts for the rich to building concentration camps at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib to invading Iraq (news – web sites) to enrich Dick Cheney (news – web sites) and his fellow Halliburton execs, some groups are encouraging liberal-minded New Yorkers to volunteer for the city’s squad of official greeters. Creatively altered maps of streets and subways will be handed out to button-clad stupid white men. Other saboteurs wearing fake RNC T-shirts will direct them to parts of town where Bush’s policies have hit hardest. Rumor has it that prostitutes suffering from sexually transmitted diseases will discourage the use of condoms with Republican customers.

Bernadette Malone of the Union-Leader said I wrote:

They plan on throwing pies and Lord knows what else at Republican visitors to the city. Prostitutes with AIDS plan to seduce Republican visitors, and discourage the use of condoms, according to liberal journalist Ted Rall.

Of course, they could have simply quoted me. But that wouldn’t have been quite so incendiary.