Posted on 08/07/2007 5:28:15 PM PDT by Checkers
The final chapter in the Scott Thomas Beauchamp saga has yet to be written, but Mark Steyn makes a point that should be kept in mind if Michael Goldfarb's intelilgence bears out:
"If that Weekly Standard story is correct, it moves Private Beauchamp into full-blown Stephen Glass territory. In essence, they made the same mistakes all over again - falling for pat cinematic vividness, pseudo-novelistic dialogue, all designed to confirm prejudices so ingrained the editors didn't even recognize they were being pandered to. But this time they did it in war, which is worse."
Recall that nearly thirty of the stories that New Republic fabulist Stephen Glass wrote for the New Republic were subsequently determined to be fabricated in whole or in part. Recall the conflicting statements posted by "the editors" of the New Republic confirming and standing by Beauchamp's three TNR articles with the ultimate exception of the location of the incident involved in the lead anecodote of "Shock troops" (which itself destroyed the purported point of the anecdote). We await some definitive word on the Army's investigation and the return of "the editors" from their vacation.
They’re all aging hippies from the 1960’s, so why wouldn’t they love a story like Beauchamp’s?
I can’t wait for Steyn’s full column on this farce. I really can’t.
Give that Beauchamp character The Jayson Blair Award for creative reporting.
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