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Jersey Sure (Mark Steyn 'Pinocchios' the Fact Checkers on Muslim 9/11 Celebrations)
Steyn Online ^ | Tuesday, November 24, 2015 | Mark Steyn

Posted on 11/24/2015 4:08:12 AM PST by kristinn

I have a strong dislike of the current fashion among American's decrepit and unreadable newspapers for "fact-checker" columns, because the practice attempts to cloak run-of-the-mill hacks in an aura of dispassionate authority that they do not, in fact, possess. Case in point: The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler, who has awarded "four Pinocchios" to Donald Trump, for claiming to recall seeing "thousands" of Jersey City Muslims celebrating on September 11th 2001. Mr Kessler wrote:

Trump says that he saw this with his own eyes on television and that it was well covered. But an extensive examination of news clips from that period turns up nothing. There were some reports of celebrations overseas, in Muslim countries, but nothing that we can find involving the Arab populations of New Jersey.

Kessler has spent the day re-writing and re-re-writing that confident assertion. As of now, that last sentence currently reads:

There were some reports of celebrations overseas, in Muslim countries, but nothing that we can find involving the Arab populations of New Jersey except for unconfirmed reports.

When Kessler says "nothing that we can find", he didn't have to search very hard. After a two-minute Google search, Powerline's John Hinderaker turned up the following:

In Jersey City, within hours of two jetliners' plowing into the World Trade Center, law enforcement authorities detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the devastation on the other side of the river.

What demented fringe conspiracist website would traffic in such nonsense? Well, in fact, it was Glenn Kessler's own newspaper, The Washington Post, which published the story on September 18th 2001. Is it an "unconfirmed report"? Well, Kessler's colleague, Post reporter Serge Kolvaleski, said in a 2003...

(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: marksteyn
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To: Sir_Humphrey

Hmm, you should begin believing Trump instead of yourself. It happened. Locals CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, WOR, WPIX all showed it. You are entitled to your opinion, not entitled to your own set of facts. Hillary and JEB thank you!


21 posted on 11/24/2015 4:53:32 AM PST by j.argese (/s tags: If you have a mind unnecessary. If you're a cretin it really doesn't matter, does it?)
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To: j.argese

My brother in law was a JC cop in 2001 and I heard from him about the Liberty Park demonstrations. Unreported at the time was the fact several of the Muslims made smart ass remarks while being questioned and had the living p*ss beat out of them

No reason in the world for him to make this up. There were also reports i read of similar celebrations in Patterson NJ.


22 posted on 11/24/2015 5:13:53 AM PST by billyboy15
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To: j.argese
If somebody could produce concrete proof (ex. video or pictures) this controversy goes away.

And NO I definitely don't want JEB and certainly not Hillary. My first vote ever was for Reagan and this time I am leaning Cruz.

If Trump got the nomination, this wouldn't be a make or break issue for me. I am just amazed by the dozens of public and private replies I received from people who swear they have see coverage of this yet can't produce proof. I live in the NYC metro area and was in the city that day. I don't recall seeing coverage of Muslims celebrating in Jersey City that day.

23 posted on 11/24/2015 5:14:04 AM PST by Sir_Humphrey (I farted on Michael Moore's pillow)
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To: j.argese
Locals CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, WOR, WPIX all showed it.

Well then it's impossible that the clips of this reporting won't come out.

Waiting...

24 posted on 11/24/2015 5:14:23 AM PST by semimojo
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To: kristinn

I sent this on to Deidre Bolton at Fox Business since she was commenting on this yesterday and hosting other commenters who said it didn’t happen. We should all send this on to the various talking heads who are saying that Trump lied.


25 posted on 11/24/2015 5:16:43 AM PST by Truth29
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To: exPBRrat
Well I remember it being reported of a joyous celebration of Muslims in Paterson NJ on the destruction of the Twin Towers.
Obviously your memory does not play you false in this instance.

But your comment puts me in mind of the time when the ChiComs invaded mountainous territory claimed by India. Many years later it was pointed out that the Nationalist Chinese government on Taiwan had supported the ChiComs at the time. I knew that that was not so. But it was . . .


26 posted on 11/24/2015 5:18:35 AM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion ('Liberalism' is a conspiracy against the public by wire-service journalism.)
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To: rarestia

Your wife should be doing the ironing while you sleep.


27 posted on 11/24/2015 5:18:57 AM PST by wjcsux ("In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." - George Orwell)
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To: econjack; All

Everyone who is a part of the DC Cartel is afraid of Trump.

Remember, next November’s ballots will also have a place to check for every one of the 435 members of Congress and 34 Senators. The presidential primaries are typically long before the state primaries for their representatives. Case in point;

The Florida Presidential Primary is March 15 and is a part of the now called SEC Primary. If all goes as is, that will be the defining official moment. The state’s Federal legislative filing deadline is very late June ~28th and the actual primary is not until almost middle August.

I believe this example is what is filling the skivies of the establishment and in essence the basis for the latest DC elites moves to take Trump out. Their problem is that they are trying to play football on a hockey rink. If Trump wins the primaries, I think he will then pivot to build the insurgent wave against the DC elites therefore giving him a Congress that he can get something done with.


28 posted on 11/24/2015 5:31:05 AM PST by mazda77
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To: kristinn

There are any number of things that disappear down the memory hole once the political importance becomes clear.

Your best chance of honest reporting is in the immediate aftermath of an event before anyone knows which way the politics will cut. Once the press has figured out the political angle, you’ll get no more honest reporting after that.

Does anyone remember, during the first Gulf War, the Scuds being knocked down by Patriot batteries, and then after the war we were assured that they never worked... I still don’t know what that was all about.


29 posted on 11/24/2015 5:32:42 AM PST by marron
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To: Sir_Humphrey

It was widely reported that it happened, by passers-by and cops, not by reporters. It was picked up by the press, but because it wasn’t a TV reporter who witnessed it, and it was a short-lived phenomenon, there isn’t going to be any video tape.

This is one of the reasons FR is so valuable. The press report would have been re-printed here, and was in fact widely discussed here. So even if the press “disappears” their press reports from the times, Jim Robinson has it in his servers.


30 posted on 11/24/2015 5:39:03 AM PST by marron
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To: FlingWingFlyer
I have a strong dislike of the current fashion among American's decrepit and unreadable newspapers for "fact-checker" columns, because the practice attempts to cloak run-of-the-mill hacks in an aura of dispassionate authority that they do not, in fact, possess. Case in point: The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler, who has awarded "four Pinocchios" to Donald
We need fact checkers to start checking the fact checkers.
Certainly - that is what FR is.
The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing. - Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
Here on FR we pool our “incredulity” along with that of Mark Steyn and others.

But is arrogant to claim to be objective, and we should avoid arrogance. Thus, Steyn is right to reject the very idea of claiming to be a “fact checker.”


31 posted on 11/24/2015 6:17:44 AM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion ('Liberalism' is a conspiracy against the public by wire-service journalism.)
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To: Sir_Humphrey

It happened in Seattle...in the Somalia community. Michael Medvedev reported on it.


32 posted on 11/24/2015 6:23:58 AM PST by goodnesswins (hey..Wussie Americans....ISIS is coming. Are you ready?)
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To: Sir_Humphrey

Concrete proof. What a laugh. As if the Bible is concrete proof that Jesus lived and died for us. I wasn’t there, I don’t have the video. If it is all true despite the lack of video, what relationship does the confirming video have to truth?

Perhaps faith confirmed by the Holy Spirit, has more meaning than we chose to accept. And lack of physical evidence certainly doesn’t change the truth.


33 posted on 11/24/2015 6:51:53 AM PST by wita
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To: Sir_Humphrey
Trump said he saw thousands of Muslims cheering the attacks in Jersey City. The only way he could have done that was to see it on TV. If that happened, there should be video footage. I have yet to see (and I was in NYC on 9-11) said footage.

I realize 2001 was pre IPhone. But it wasn't 1901. Thousands of people gathering in the street is a huge happening.There were cameras, there were video recorders. I am skeptical of Trump's statement until I see video proof. If it actually happened, it wouldn't be that hard to get.

Memory can play tricks on you. If something fits your frame of reference you remember it better, if it is outside of your frame of reference you tend not to notice it or remember it. That is what happens, big time, to the “MSM.” They do not remember any muslims celebrating 911 in America. Trump saw, on TV as you say, thousands of muslims celebrating 911. And he saw, and may have heard on the radio, reports of muslims celebrating 911 in New Jersey. His memory played less of a trick on him than the entire MSM memory played on it.

It is a question of who is identifying with who. His memory reveals that Donald Trump identifies with the people who died in the WTC - after all, as a New Yorker he easily might have been one of them - and “the MSM” does not. And neither, plainly, does the PotUS.

As a political issue, the difference between “some muslims celebrating 911 in NJ” and “thousands of muslims on TV (worldwide) celebrating 911” is not a lie. In the context of PotUS making it clear that he would prefer that the entire Republican part of the US population be replaced by people who probably did celebrate 911, it is a political truth.

“”
34 posted on 11/24/2015 6:51:55 AM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion ('Liberalism' is a conspiracy against the public by wire-service journalism.)
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To: kristinn

The Washington Post and the New York Times reported Jersey City arrests of Muslims celebrating on 9/11, apparently to the point of a public disturbance. The Post reporter interviewed the Jersey City PD and confirmed it with eyewitnesses.

Trump was right. His detractors in the liberal press are wrong, and it was their own copy from that period that did them in.


35 posted on 11/24/2015 7:57:24 AM PST by Senator Goldwater
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To: wjcsux

My wife hates to iron. I was taught very young how to iron properly and always have done my own shirts and slacks. I find it soothing.


36 posted on 11/24/2015 8:45:59 AM PST by rarestia (It's time to water the Tree of Liberty.)
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To: kristinn

The truth is the truth. It really doesn’t depend on “fact-checkers” to make it true.


37 posted on 11/24/2015 12:44:00 PM PST by Gritty (The Barbarians Are Inside, And There Are No Gates. So screw the candlelight vigil. - Mark Steyn)
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To: goodnesswins
It happened in Seattle...in the Somalia community. Michael Medvedev reported on it.

With all due respect, that is off topic. Trump said he saw thousands cheering in the streets of Jersey City. There is no proof that actually happened. Seattle wasn't mentioned once. Oh and BTW, were there any pictures or videos of that?

38 posted on 11/24/2015 3:11:31 PM PST by Sir_Humphrey (I farted on Michael Moore's pillow)
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To: Sir_Humphrey

Yes there is proof. The Washington Post had the articles and they have been outed for lying.


39 posted on 11/24/2015 3:15:05 PM PST by dforest
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To: kristinn

American media = domestic enemy.

When the time comes act accordingly.

That is all.

L


40 posted on 11/24/2015 3:16:26 PM PST by Lurker (Violence is rarely the answer. But when it is it is the only answer.)
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