Brian Duffy might make for a good columnist; he certainly has shown little evidence that he knows how to write a news story.
Duffy’s work has prompted at least one of my previous “says who?” salvos. This week, the U.S. News writer does it again. His supposedly newsworthy topic is the absence of chatter about the coincidence of the Iraq Study Group report and the 65th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor bombing.
It may well be because, for all of the Bush administration’s sedulous efforts to paint Iraq as “the central front in the war on terror,” most Americans understand that this is not the case, even as they see the necessity of finding a solution there that would not allow its sectarian strife to ignite into a wider regional conflagration. That so few saw any possibility of drawing meaning from the coincidence of the historic anniversary with what surely will stand as one of President Bush’s most chastening days underscores perhaps the real long-term cost of the tragic misadventure in Iraq: There was, in short, no “Vandenberg Moment.” [Kokai note: This is a reference to an isolationist senator’s realization that the Pearl Harbor bombing made his previous position untenable.]
This paragraph would not bother me if I read it in a column clearly labeled “opinion.” But Duffy and his bosses try to market this stuff as news. Even if you agree with Duffy’s opinions, wouldn’t you like to read some attribution? A poll result? An expert source? Anything that suggests these ideas have some relation to news?
