Milwaukee's Pravda

In recent days, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Wisconsin's largest and supposedly most influential newspaper, has been given a national spotlight.

On Monday, Editor and Publisher touted the Journal Sentinel's move to apologize for its role in accepting the " 'cooked' evidence about WMD in Iraq that helped lead to war in 2003."

Apparently, editorial page editor Ricardo Pimentel was inspired by the critical self-analysis that the New York Times has been conducting.

In an October 29, 2005, editorial, Pimentel wrote:

The New York Times occupies an elevated strata of journalism. But do the rest of us below that level of influence and reach - this newspaper's Editorial Board being my concern - also have a responsibility to explain ourselves?

I think so. In the interest of transparency.

The news side of this operation simply reported the days' events and debate in the walkup to the war, including meaningful reporting of the reasons given.

But, you see, this Editorial Board did indeed accept the premise that Saddam Hussein had these weapons early on. And in that acceptance by the board, it can be credibly argued that we did a bit of promulgating ourselves.

...Now, of course, we discover much evidence that the intelligence fed the public, including us, was "cooked" or "fixed" - choose your favorite description - around what the administration viewed as its most salable argument. Americans were not likely to favor invasion because of the dominoes-of-democracy theory nor because Hussein was a monster. Vietnam is a word that still resonates, and what made this particular monster any more worth toppling than the world's many other monsters?

But, yes, regrettably on the matter of WMD, count us as among the many who were duped. We should have been more skeptical. For that lack of skepticism and the failure to include the proper caveats to the WMD claim, we apologize, though I would note that, ultimately, we didn't believe that the president's central WMD argument warranted war. Not then and especially not now.

Pimentel is being held up by the radical Left as a hero, a man having the integrity to apologize for his role in failing the public for not aggressively pursuing the matter of WMD.

How brave to admit to being duped!

As is often the case, most media heroes of the far Left are usually heavier on spreading propaganda than truth. Pimentel fits that mold.

Any newspaper's editorial page is the proper place for opinion. It's completely appropriate for Pimentel and his staff to take a stand and express it. However, even in opinion pieces, a paper owes its readers at least some degree of accuracy. Editorials need to be grounded in facts.

Pimentel's editorial page does not do that. It regularly disregards and distorts reality. What the Journal Sentinel prints as opinion is often fantasy.

In fact, its editorializing has as much credibility as the Soviet Union's Pravda had when it was a state-owned publication of the Communist Party.

Without question, Pimentel and the editorial board are typical liberal advocates. I don't have a problem with that. However, I do have a problem with the habitual distortion of facts that they use to prop up their opinions, all in the name of promoting their far Leftist agenda.

Of course, Pimentel's mea culpa has a purpose--to play into the Dems' "Bush lied" strategy. His apology coincides with the Dems' attempts to make the Libby indictment about the war in Iraq.

In his October 28, press conference, Fitzgerald clearly stated:

This indictment is not about the war. This indictment's not about the propriety of the war. And people who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel.

...The indictment will not seek to prove that the war was justified or unjustified. This is stripped of that debate, and this is focused on a narrow transaction.

And I think anyone's who's concerned about the war and has feelings for or against shouldn't look to this criminal process for any answers or resolution of that.

They will be frustrated and, frankly, it would just -- it wouldn't be good for the process and the fairness of a trial.

In spite of this clarity, the Dems and the lib media are still linking the Libby indictment with the administration's interpretation of intelligence prior to the war in Iraq.

In fact, I think that Pimentel's editorial was prompted by the fact that Fitzgerald said the indictment is not about the war. Although Fitz didn't deliver, Pimentel sticks with the Dem "Bush lied" template.

Again, if the Bush administration lied about WMD, then so did the Clinton adminstration. If Pimentel was sincere in apologizing to his readers for being duped, he also needs to address all of the Dems that echoed Clinton's insistence that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD and would use them if given the chance.

On the heels of this stupidity from the Journal Sentinel editorial page comes another embarrassment.

Yesterday, an editorial by Pimentel addressed Bush's nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court of the United States. Not surprisingly, it was full of the Leftist drivel that readers have come to expect from Pimentel's page; but there was something in the editorial that brought national attention to the paper.

The Journal Sentinel has come under fire for its opinion about diversity on the Court.

Another minus is that the nomination lessens the court's diversity. O'Connor herself had expressed the desire that her successor be a woman. O'Connor seems to have grown wiser about diversity as a result of her Supreme Court experience. She came to see the virtues of having a court that looks like America - doubtless a big reason she softened her opposition to affirmative action in recent years.

In losing a woman, the court with Alito would feature seven white men, one white woman and a black man, who deserves an asterisk because he arguably does not represent the views of mainstream black America.

Although Pimentel's opinion is completely consistent with his mindset, that makes it no less repulsive.

Apparently, Clarence Thomas is not black. He adds no diversity to the Court. He may look black, but he's really not because he's conservative.

The asterisk that Pimentel suggests should be applied to Thomas means that he believes Thomas should not be considered black. In Pimentel's universe, real blacks don't think like Thomas.

Whether you consider yourself liberal or conservative or something in between, this should disgust you.

It is a blatantly racist comment.

Despite the national attention that the Journal Sentinel has received for its repugnant editorial, there is not one word in today's issue about the controversy.

However, Charlie offers some insight into the Journal Sentinel's spin. He posts a reply that Ed Poole, Jr., received in response to a letter to the editor that he wrote, commenting on the paper's irresponsible stereotyping of blacks.

Gregory Stanford, an African-American, tries to rationalize the paper's position.

Mr. Poole:

Thanks for your message. Mr. Pimentel asked me, as the writer of the editorial, to respond. We were merely noting in the passage to which you object that the elder President Bush had appointed Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court for the sake of racial diversity, but that, because Thomas often takes stands at odds with mainstream black thought, his appointment does not help the court mirror America as much as it could have – which is what diversity is all about. Noting that Thomas is on the fringes of black thought is merely observing a fact, not stereotyping. Justices Stevens and Ginsburg do represent wide swaths of American thought.

Gregory Stanford
Editorial Writer/Columnist
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

In other words, Thomas does not adhere to "mainsteam black thought," as defined by the Journal Sentinel. So, Thomas brings no racial diversity to the Court.

Stanford's logic is twisted.

Using the Reflexive Property of Equality:

If Black = Liberal, then Liberal = Black.

That means that Stevens and Ginsburg are black and should be counted as appointments made for the sake of racial diversity. Actually, Souter is black, too.

According to the wisdom of Pimentel and the Journal Sentinel editorial page, the Supreme Court is really far more racially diverse than it appears.

Who knew?