The Ben Carson/West Point story has taken some pretty absurd turns the past couple of days, which is what usually happens when a media feeding frenzy like this starts. One Detroit political reporter was actually bragging (!) that his paper had three reporters working on an assignment to check Gen. William Westmoreland's schedule from 1969 to find out if he actually had dinner with Carson.
And it all started when the worst web site in the world claimed Carson had admitted he fabricated a passage in his book about being offered a scholarship to West Point during the aforementioned dinner with Westmoreland. I thought it looked pretty bad too when it came out on Friday (and I still think Carson wrote the book passage in a misleading way, although probably unintentionally), but boy oh boy, did Carson come out swinging on Friday and ever since.
Check this out"
The problem with Politico's story is not so much that it got the facts wrong, but that it completely mischaracterized what they meant. Politico assumed that Carson's story of being offered a scholarship was a fabrication because it could find no formal record of an application, without even considering the possibility that the "offer" was informal. When Carson's campaign responded to the story, Politico was forced to admit Carson had never claimed he formally applied.
This is classic Politico. They're all about the narratives that can arise from a set of facts or statements - especially if they can drive the narrative in a way that's damaging to people they don't like - rather than the facts themselves. And this time, because their target fought back, they got busted:
Politico's initial story began by stating that Carson's campaign had admitted "that a central point in his inspirational personal story was fabricated: his application and acceptance into the U.S. Military Academy at West Point."
In fact, there is no evidence in Politico's story that Carson ever claimed to have applied to West Point.
The Politico story does show that Carson said several times that he was "offered a full scholarship to West Point." He made that claim in his book, "Gifted Hands," and in several media interviews, including during an appearance on Charlie Rose last month.
Carson acknowledged Friday that he was never offered a full scholarship to West Point, and sought to clarify that he had instead been given an informal offer or "nomination" to attend West Point.
"Because I had done so extraordinarily well you know I was told that someone like me -- they could get a scholarship to West Point. But I made it clear I was going to pursue a career in medicine," Carson toldThe New York Times. "It was, you know, an informal 'with a record like yours we could easily get you a scholarship to West Point."
As I said twice on Friday, and I'll say again now, Carson should not have worded this passage of his book in the way he did. I don't know if Carson used a ghostwriter, but I've worked on books both as a ghostwriter and as an editor, and had I been serving in either capacity on this book I would have asked Carson during initial interviews to give me details of the scholarship offer. Had he told me it was informal over dinner and that he never applied, I would have told that was fine but we need to make that clear in the book. My guess is that Carson would have agreed immediately.
Now this is not to pass off responsibility on ghostwriter and/or editors. It's Carson's book and he's responsible for what's in it. But having said all this, it's easy to see how this was simply a matter of needing to explain something a little better and not a fabrication. But that does not mean Politico made a mistake, by which I mean this: Politico intentionally does things like this. It's what they exist to do. Executive editor and co-founder Jim VandeHei created Politico for the express purpose of pulling this kind of crap. And this garbage web site reflects its leader perfectly.
To turn around a well-worn media cliche, I'd say that if Politico reports that your mother loves you, you'd better check it out.
But Politico and its media imitators haven't given up on this. They're now digging deep into Gen. Westmoreland's schedule from 46 years ago to try to prove Carson never had dinner with the general:
Finally, Politico's story seeks to cast doubt on Carson's claim that he was introduced to General William Westmoreland during Memorial Day of his senior year at high school.
In "Gifted Hands," Carson writes that his high school ROTC director "introduced me to General Westmoreland, and I had dinner with him and the Congressional Medal winners."
Politico says official U.S. Army records show Westmoreland did not visit Detroit around Memorial Day in 1969 or have dinner with Carson. "In fact," Politico reports, "the general's records suggest he was in Washington that day and played tennis at 6:45 p.m."
But Politico goes on to note that there was a similar banquet event in Detroit in February of that year that the General did attend, and that "Carson, a leader of the city's ROTC program at the time, may have been among the invited guests at the $10-a-plate event."
Following pushback from the Carson campaign, Politico softened its headline and changed its lead and various details in the story. The story is now headlined, "Exclusive: Carson claimed West Point 'scholarship' but never applied."
So what this looks like as of now is that Carson had dinner with Westmoreland in Detroit in 1969, but remembered the month wrong, and was told he could get a scholarship if he applied, but never did - only to later describe this somewhat imprecisely as an "offer" when it was really just an informal prodding to take a shot at it.
Keep this in mind as well: Carson wrote this book in 1990 - 25 years ago and obviously long before he ever had any thought of running for political office. That doesn't mean there couldn't have been a temptation to embellish a story here and there to make himself sound more impressive, but the timeline makes it difficult to justify the notion he fabricated a bunch of nonsense to help himself in preparation for a political campaign.
My criticisms of his writing notwithstanding, there is no way any of this justifies the way Politico tried to play the story on Friday. Even so, you can bet the political media - and maybe even some fellow Republican candidates - will cling to the "Carson fabricated" narrative because once such a narrative is established it's very hard to put it back in the bottle - which is exactly why Politico is such a blotch upon humanity. They can write whatever BS they want, and even when their writing is discredited and they have to go back and change it, the damage is still done. Which is exactly what Politico was after all along.
Even so, Carson has done well by standing up to Politico and to the media in general through this whole thing. What his fellow Republicans should do is join him in that counterattack, because it should be clearer than ever by now that the number one enemy of any Republican candidate is the news media - and they should be treated as such.
And that starts with dishonest slanderers like Jim VandeHei and the people who work for him at Politico.
The Ben Carson/West Point story has taken some pretty absurd turns the past couple of days, which is what usually happens when a media feeding frenzy like this starts. One Detroit political reporter was actually bragging (!) that his paper had three reporters working on an assignment to check Gen. William Westmoreland's schedule from 1969 to find out if he actually had dinner with Carson.
And it all started when the worst web site in the world claimed Carson had admitted he fabricated a passage in his book about being offered a scholarship to West Point during the aforementioned dinner with Westmoreland. I thought it looked pretty bad too when it came out on Friday (and I still think Carson wrote the book passage in a misleading way, although probably unintentionally), but boy oh boy, did Carson come out swinging on Friday and ever since.
Check this out"
