Search Results for: collin levey

My head filled with dark thoughts in the days following yet another stolen election (oops… forgot to wear my aluminum hat), I totally forgot to read Collin Levey’s latest column: “Bush’s religious base bolsters support for Israel.”

Happily, any such temptation is likely to be nipped in the bud by a serendipitous and growing alliance between Jewish pro-Israel voters and the “Zionist” Christians of the president’s conservative base.

Yeah… see, Collin… the only problem with this serendipity is that these “Zionist” Christians are pro-Israel because they believe it will lead to the total destruction of the Jewish people.

I’m assuming Collin is Jewish like me, and perhaps like most Jews, she hasn’t spent much time reading the New Testament. As a piece of nonfiction I find it rather boring and preachy compared to the Torah… and I must say I find some of the gospels transparently self-serving on the part of the authors.

I’m sure many Christians might disagree with my critique. There’s no accounting for taste.

But as I’ve said before, Revelations is, well… a revelation.

The prophecy requires that before the Second Coming the Jews must return to the Holy Land (check) and rebuild the Temple… (Oops! That would require tearing down the Dome of the Rock, one of the holiest mosques in Islam.)

Anyway… and what happens next? Well, a third of the Jews convert to Christianity, and the rest of us are destroyed in Armageddon. (The good news is, it finally ends over two thousand years of anti-semitism.)

This “Zionist”, evangelical Christian Republican base with which Collin is so eager to ally herself, may indeed be passionately pro-Israel… but they are most definitely not pro-Jew.

These are people who are happily looking forward to Armageddon… who eagerly await “The Rapture” (which my brother-in-law Dan reminds me, could be a boon for the schmatte business.) These are people who fervently believe the end-of-the-world is coming, and not a moment too soon.

And these are the people we want driving our foreign policy?!

Collin — from one Jew to another — I’ve got only one word to say to you: Oy!

I think I’ll take a break from attacking one evil corporation, to go back to attacking another. (So many evil corporations… so little time.)

I’ve already blogged a couple times about Sinclair Broadcasting, and their blatantly propagandistic plans to pre-empt primetime programming on their 62 network affiliates to air a 90-minute documentary-cum-infomercial attacking John Kerry, a week before the election. Most recently, I deconstructed Collin Levey’s pathetic defense of Sinclair (Ein gef

See, the thing about Collin Levey that really bothers me is that she is obviously smart. So when she spins and twists and grotesquely distorts her arguments to suit her own political and ideological agenda, she knows exactly how untruthful she is being.

I wonder… when she pens one of these whoppers, does the writer in her feel a little pang of angst, knowing that some equally bright colleague or cocktail acquaintance might casually and devastatingly deconstruct her column to reveal little more than a steaming pile of clever sloganeering atop a “Bush for President” bumper sticker?

Take, for example, yesterday’s column in The Seattle Times: “Dems walk a dangerous path with anti-Kerry-film complaint“. Collin attacks Democratic senators for complaining about Sinclair Broadcasting’s plan to preempt prime-time, network programming to air an anti-Kerry film on its 62 stations, many of them in swing states.

If “Stolen Honor” is anything like it’s been characterized, then the Sinclair broadcast essentially amounts to a 90-minute political infomercial on the eve of the presidential election. Even Collin makes little effort to dispute the bias of the film… although you can safely assume that neither one of us has actually seen it.

Collin equates “Stolen Honor” with “Fahrenheit 9/11”, and in her typical, arrogant fashion, attempts to sell her argument by trying to make her readers feel stupid:

With apologies for the remedial observation, broadcast networks and movies in the theaters operate on two different business models

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The Times has a reputation for endorsing early and often, so reading between the lines of their latest editorial, it looks to me like Kerry is going to eventually get the official nod from the Times’ editorial board.
[Kerry’s right to slam the president on Iraq]

Never shy about chiming in with the right-wing media echo chamber when it suits their agenda (ie, Collin Levey), the dissonant tone of this editorial was striking. On the issue of Iraq, it strongly defends Kerry against the charge of flip-flopping, an always easy laugh line for lazy comedians and lazier columnists (ie, Collin Levey.) And it is unequivocal in its criticism of President Bush’s performance.

I often disagree with the Times’ rather conservative stance on many issues, but it is encouraging to see them reject Bush’s neo-conservative warmongering.

After giving the first whack to RNC hatchetgal Collin Levey, the Seattle Times today officially joined the scrum over disappointing test scores at charter schools. [The debunking politics of charter schools]

The results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress report add nothing to the debate on charter schools.

Yeah… especially if you don’t report it.

In case you get all your “news” from the Seattle Times, (and thus have no idea what we’re talking about,) the NY Times broke a story earlier this weekly (quickly picked up by the Seattle P-I and Tacoma News Tribune) that Education Department statistics show fourth graders at charter schools lag half a year behind similar students at traditional public schools.

Of course, keeping your readers ignorant makes it so much easier to refute the study in an editorial. For example, the Seattle Times attempts to discount the results as being an unfair comparison:

Charter schools are concentrated in urban, often poor, areas. Many students were unsuccessful in the public schools. After years of being academically behind, they are now playing catch-up. Yet, the study compares their achievement with their public-school counterparts. It is an unfair, premature comparison.

But the study was careful to compare rotten apples to rotten apples. As the NY Times noted, “in almost every racial, economic and geographic category, fourth graders attending charter schools are outperformed by their peers in traditional public schools.”

On average, charter school students are performing worse than students at the schools they transfered out of. But to defend their long standing support of charter schools, the Seattle times flips the analysis on its head:

Pronouncements regarding their academic performance are more telling about the schools the children came from than about the charter schools they’re in.

Oh please…!

Still, much of the Seattle Times editorial is measured, even reasonable. Of course there may be extenuating circumstances that influenced the test results, and of course it is too early in the charter school experiment to judge it one way or the other.

But proponents of charter schools have loudly touted them as a superior, free market alternative — offering nothing but anecdotes to back up their claims — so I must disagree with the Seattle Times editorial board. National test results showing charter school students lagging behind does add something very important to the national and local debate: a dose of reality.

Washington voters have wisely chosen a cautious approach to charter schools, and I expect they’ll do so again this November by rejecting R-55.

Perhaps if Collin Levey spent a little less time reading the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and a little more time watching TV, she’d be better informed.

Oh, I’m not suggesting she tune in “Who Wants to Marry an Apprentice Survivor,” or whatever the latest hit reality show is (although that would probably still be more informative than the WSJ editorial page.) But if she was planning to write on federal forest management policies, she might have benefited from KCTS’s Tuesday airing of the NOVA episode “Fire Wars,” which chronicles the devastating 2000 forest fire season, and explains how a century of misguided fire suppression policy led to the monster fires we see today.

But no, just like the Bush administration, she prefers to base her opinions on political polemic rather than science. [It takes a tree-hugger to raze a forest]

So for Collin, the real culprit is the hoard of “downy youngsters with laptops chaining themselves to old-growth trees.” She finds this image so amusing she mentions it three times, and I admit it might have a satirical impact with readers if the image it parodied actually had any currency.

I’m an avid news-hound, and while I don’t doubt that somewhere in this great nation an idealistic, young environmentalist is protesting old-growth logging, I don’t recall a recent news story involving chains and laptops. (At least not related to forestry.)

I’m particularly leery of Collin’s tales of summer-camp-like tree sitting outings, with campers emailing home personal hygiene reports. It’s not the lack of showers that makes me suspicious — that’s consistent with my own overnight camp experience. It’s her obsession with laptops.

First of all, it can be hard enough configuring a WIFI network to extend 60 feet from the den to the living-room, let alone hundreds of miles deep into roadless, virgin forest. So it’s not like these purported young activists are passing the days browsing the internet.

Second, the average laptop is lucky to get 2 to 3 hours per charge, so unless these old growth stands happen to be strategically located near power outlets, I doubt these laptops are good for much more than protecting your lap from angry squirrels. In fact, harkening back to my own summer camp days, the only laptop I remember is that of a particularly odd counselor who always seemed a bit too fond of the younger boys.

I’m not saying Collin made this anecdote up; I’m sure she based it on something or other she read somewhere… before completely blowing it out of proportion. But as I’m too ethically rigid (i.e. cheap) to send a dime to the WSJ for the privilege of reading their editorial page slanders, I don’t usually have access to her primary source material.

In any case… there never is much subtext to Collin’s arguments, and this column struts the usual rhetorical cahones, branding Bill Clinton’s now-defunct road building ban “a giveaway.” A giveaway to whom? The American public who owns the national forests?

Calling it a “giveaway” implies that road building through virgin timber is somehow the natural state of affairs, but we’re talking about our national forests, not the interstate highway system. This isn’t the I-5 corridor, it’s the last 10% of old growth forest that once symbolized the Evergreen State.

Saving for future generations the few remaining patches of unspoiled wilderness is not a giveaway. A giveaway is subsidizing the logging industry by spending taxpayer dollars to build roads through virgin timber that would otherwise be uneconomical to cut.

By measuring forests in “board feet”, and attacking John Kerry for “sidling up to hunting and sportsmen groups,” it is clear that Collins idea of “more-localized accountability for the management of public lands” envisions our national forests as little more than the unfinished two-by-four section of Home Depot.

I understand Collin’s partisan zeal to reduce this issue to a fight between Democrats and the rest of us, but in so doing she dumbs down a complex debate that would best be decided by forestry experts rather than politicians, columnists and bloggers. It is convenient for her to blame the recent spate of fires on “hands-off” forestry policy, but she’s clearly spent little if any effort researching the issue.

If Collin really wants to understand the scientific and historical context of todays forestry practices, she should set her VCR for Saturday, July 17 at 2:00 AM, when KCTS rebroadcasts “Fire Wars.”

But I doubt she’s interested. See, the problem with science is that — unlike the WSJ editorial page — it doesn’t always tell you what you want to hear.

There are two things we can learn from Collin Levey’s column in today’s Seattle Times: “Don’t underestimate the Ralph Nader flutter effect.”

The first is that I was wrong to imply that The Wall Street Journal is the only thing Collin reads. She clearly has also read The Velveteen Rabbit. Sorry Collin.

The second thing we can learn is that her bosses at Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, Inc. are drooling over the prospect of a Ralph Nader candidacy.

Her thesis that anti-war Republicans (all several of them) are more likely to turn to Nader than anti-war Democrats is, well… nutty. And I suspect, disingenuous. As is her advice to Kerry:

The one thing Democrats haven’t done, and won’t do, is speak clearly enough on Iraq (and in favor of a rapid exit) to steal Nader’s thunder. That’s why Nader’s stronger-than-expected showing in the polls may be carried right through to the election.

Yeah, that’s exactly what Democrats should do, because we’re all stupid and heartless and irresponsible. Abdicating our nation’s obligation to clean up its own mess in Iraq is exactly the strategy for winning in November.

Thanks for the advice Collin.

It’s Thursday, or as we like to call it here at HorsesAss.org: “Collin Levey Day.” Her column is fresh off the press at The Seattle Times, stinking of ink and right-wing propaganda.

Years ago, I would watch the McLaughlin Group, looking forward to Pat Buchanan’s myopic predictions as an indicator of his conservative allies’ hopes and dreams — and Collin is proving to be just as accurate a political barometer. If there is one thing we can learn from today’s column, “Odd man out: Al Gore’s journey into irrelevance,” it’s that her bosses at Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, Inc. are obviously terrified of Al Gore.

The very fact that she chose to expend her precious column inches proclaiming Al Gore’s irrelevance is a testament to the opposite. The truth is, Mr. Gore’s spate of impassioned speeches is lighting a fire under the Democratic faithful, rubbing fresh salt into the still open wounds of a stolen election. And even a tiny blip in Democratic turnout could be enough to overwhelm the unprecedented election fraud being perpetrated by the GOP in battleground states like Florida.

Mr. Gore’s latest speech, a strongly worded critique of President Bush’s foreign policy, has elicited such illuminating comments from right-wing pundits as “crazy,” “insane,” and “totally nuts.” My guess is that Collin didn’t bother reading the transcript before adding her own voice to the chorus (though I suppose Alan Murray of The Wall Street Journal might have.) If she had, she might have tried refuting a few of the statements instead of just dismissing their author as irrelevant.

It’s not that Collin is a bad writer; indeed, she occasionally shows a keen gift for poison penmanship (a craft I truly appreciate.) But until she starts coming up with a few of her own theses instead of just serving as the Seattle stop on the WSJ’s rhetorical wagon train, Collin Levey Day is going to continue being my favorite day of the week.

I’ve been known to say a few unkind words about The Seattle Times, particularly their Op/Ed pages. I’m not apologizing; after all, they are the largest and most influential paper in the state, so they are more than a fair target.

And let’s be honest, who could resist poking a little fun at Collin Levey and her slavish devotion to her masters at Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, Inc.? (In fact, if Collin wrote every day, I could happily devote this blog just to her.)

But fair is fair. Today they printed an excellent editorial on the need to provide funding to treat our state’s growing epidemic of problem gambling: “Tribes should ante up for addicted gamblers.”

Of course, by “excellent,” I mean that I generally agree with it, not that it necessarily excelled in any particular way. Truth is, I have some issues with its main premise, a few of the details, and some phrasing. Oh, and the headline sucks.

Great conclusion though.

Most of all, I just plain appreciate that they are so willing to use their paper as a forum for promoting this very important issue. Not to mention their continued opposition to I-892, Eyman’s “Slots for Tots” initiative.

Which brings me to a little nitpicking:

A truly shameful statewide initiative seeks to expand state-licensed gambling, allowing slot machines in bars, restaurants, taverns, cardrooms and bowling alleys.

As accurate a characterization of I-892 as I’ve ever heard. Unfortunately, they don’t actually mention I-892 by name (or number,) which will leave more than a few of its signers nodding their heads in agreement, not realizing they’ve already penned their support.

Listen to the sales pitch of a typical paid signature gatherer and you’d think I-892 was entirely about property taxes (with the side benefit of finally giving the oppressed white man equal rights with Native Americans.) Many signers have absolutely no idea what they’ve signed.

Petitioning should be a wonderfully democratic opportunity for supporters to meet their fellow citizens face-to-face and educate them on the issues, but the only education today’s for-profit initiative process offers voters is the harsh lesson that believing the promises of these paid professionals is an invitation to be screwed.

I expect The Times to be more subtle than me in criticizing I-892 (after all, they are a “family newspaper,”) but failing to mention it by name is a bit too subtle. I appreciate that The Times has been out in front, opposing this initiative from day one. I just wish they would oppose it a little louder.

So much to blog… so little time. But first…

The Lie of the Week.

In an email to supporters and the media this evening, titled “Fundraising is up for two property tax reduction initiatives,” Tim Eyman continues his math-challenged ways by claiming I-892 has “reached $300,000, with an additional $90,000 brought in during the the month of May.”

That struck me as a little odd, considering I-892 ended April with over $235,000 in contributions, and $235,000 + $90,000 equals… uh… wait, there’s something wrong with my calculator.

Or maybe… Tim is lying?

Considering that just yesterday he refused to concede to Dori Monson that $400 million times 1% equals $4 million (not the $12 million he’s been claiming,) I thought I’d check out his C4 form and get to the heart of this. Sure enough, line 4 shows contributions of $89,775.

What Tim doesn’t tell you is that $25,000 of that was due to a double entry corrected two lines later on line 6. Subtract an additional $7,300 of “in kind” contributions, and what you get is roughly $57,000 in contributions, down signficantly from April’s $75,000 haul.

There can be only two explanations for Tim’s numbers games. Either he is incredibly dishonest (I believe I may have posited this thesis once or twice before.) Or he really doesn’t understand his own initiatives, he really doesn’t understand his own finances, and he really doesn’t understand basic math. In which case, he is just incredibly, well… stupid.

Anyway, the Lie of the Week notwithstanding, the big news about I-892 is that an initiative campaign that should have drawn easy money from an industry that stands to earn billions from its passage, is turning out to be a nail biter.

With his $3100 a week salary, his usual poor money management, and his seemingly inexplicable decision to add an extra layer of profiteering to his signature gathering costs by contracting through Roy Ruffino (I have my theories about this charade,) Eyman’s campaign has quite a bit of overhead.

The street price for I-892 is currently $0.75 per signature, which after being marked up twice, can’t possibly be costing him much less than $2 each, possibly more. He needs 200,000 valid signatures, which means he’d be nuts to turn in fewer than 220,000. I just can’t see how he brings this one home for less than $500,000, and even that would be cutting it close.

Of course, the gambling industry could easily pony up $200,000 in the final weeks of the campaign, but he still has over $100,000 in the bank, which tells me he hasn’t bought a lot of signatures to date, so I’m wondering if he might run out time before he runs out of money.

I-864 Death Watch

If I-864 is still alive, it’s barely twitching. Tim raised less than $40,000 in May, bringing him to a grand total of $218,000. That might seem like a lot of money, if he didn’t spend it like a drunken sailor (you know, booze, hookers, tattoos, pointless direct mail campaigns… stuff like that.)

On the most important expenditure, paid signature gathering, he’s only spent $40,000 total thus far, with a paltry $10,000 left in the bank. Signatures have got to be costing him at least $1.00 each… maybe a $1.50. So let’s say he has 40,000 signatures there.

The bulk of his funds have been spent on sending out petitions in three large direct mail pieces, which also double as his primary source of fundraising. Let’s just say, if getting signatures was as easy as renting a mailing list and sending out a bunch of petitions, I could get an initiative legalizing crack cocaine on the ballot with $150,000 and a catchy PAC name (Let’s Get Washington Cracking!) But let’s be gracious and give Eyman another 40,000 in volunteer signatures there.

That’s well short of the 200,000 he needs to qualify for the ballot, not even counting the 20% extra you want to shoot for to make up for disqualified signatures.

Tim has been taunting us for months in his emails by ending his fundraising appeals:

Don’t ever forget this quote from a critic: “We all know that if he raises $400,000, then it’s on the ballot.”

The quote was attributed to Steve Zemke, but I said it too, and it was based on the assumption that he would spend most of the money on paid signature gatherers, not junk mail.

In any case, he’s barely halfway there, and rather than pulling in $200,000 in the final month of the campaign, I’m going out on a limb here and predicting he raises about a tenth that.

If wishes were court decisions…

Before the PDC reports came in, I was going to blog on a Seattle Times editorial demanding the State Supreme Court to overturn Governor Locke’s veto of the “top two” primary, on the sound legal basis that the Seattle Times editorial board doesn’t like the veto. [Justices should rule for people’s primary]

This was reminiscent of a Times editorial last year saying the court should halt my horse’s ass initiative because they didn’t like being forced to print the word ass in a “family newspaper” … as if I was holding a fucking gun to their head.

(Note the intentionally ironic use of profanity.)

Now, I’m no lawyer (much to my mother’s chagrin,) but I’m pretty sure the Supreme Court is supposed to decide these things based on the law, not policy. A thesis I would delve into in more detail… if the P-I hadn’t already done so in an editorial. Which would have been a very timely commentary if not for the fact that it was printed after the court handed down a decision upholding the veto.

And finally… Collin Levey has stopped returning my emails

Wall Street Journal Seattle Times editorial columnist Collin Levey took a break from her usual grueling research to wax poetic on her fond memories of Ronald Reagan:

As somebody who was 5 when Reagan took office, I belong to a generation that already has to make an effort to recall the despair and pessimism that preceded him.

Hmmm. Considering she was only 5 when Reagan took office, I can only assume that the despair and pessimism she recalls has something to do with potty training.

Unless, of course, these recollections aren’t really hers, but rather those of, say… Wall Street Journal columnist Allan Murray!

Speaking of which… last week she attacked Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” as a “dishonest infomercial,” without actually having seen the film, a characterization she based on a pair of columns by Mr. Murray that supposedly refuted Mr. Moore’s claim that Saudi’s had been allowed to fly out of the country, through restricted airspace, in the days following the attack.

Well, today’s St. Petersburg Times reports that is exactly what happened. [TIA now verifies flight of Saudis]

I’m sure she’ll issue a correction in her next column.

It’s a lazy Sunday, so I was just going to pile on Collin Levey [The less you know, the Moore you blame,] this time for her extraneous reference to “the flailing Democratic talk-radio station Air America.” (I suppose if the WSJ published a dictionary, she might look up the word “flailing” and see that beating Rush Limbaugh’s ratings head-to-head in the NY market, doesn’t quite fit the definition.)

But then, we all know she’s just following orders from her leaders at Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, Inc. They’re scared liberal talk-radio might have a market, so the echo chamber has been doing its darndest to convince potential advertisers, listeners and imitators otherwise.

My guess is that Ms. Levey has spent more than a few hours trembling with uncertainty, listening to the very entertaining O’Franken Factor streaming over the internet. And if she hasn’t, it’s probably because she’s too busy writing a review of the show to actually bother listening to it.

Of course, if writing a blog were as simple as lampooning Collin Levey’s columns, everybody would be doing it. (In fact, a quick Google search turns up no less than 9 blogs devoted exactly to that, plus one celebrity fanzine with a photo gallery of Collin hanging on the arms of various Hollywood hunks.)

But my readers demand a little more effort than Ms. Levey’s, and so I’d like to direct all several of you to an editorial in today’s Olympian: “Library system would be hit hard by I-864.”

Reading this editorial was like watching Smarty Jones run the Belmont Stakes. From the headline, it looked unbeatable. It established position out of the gate, set a strong pace, and came out of the final turn looking like a champion. Unfortunately, it was edged out by misinformation in the final furlong… uh, paragraphs.

Eyman and other initiative supporters will say the lost revenue due to the 25 percent property tax reduction will be made up for with taxes on expanded gambling opportunities.

Perhaps, but as library supporters correctly point out, there is nothing in Initiative 864 that requires that library, fire or cemetery districts, cities and counties be made whole for the tax dollars they lose with a 25 percent property tax reduction. How those additional gambling tax dollars are spent will be up to state lawmakers. Library district funding isn’t even on the radar screen for most legislators, given the demands of paying for schools, colleges and social services.

I believe I may have previously mentioned that Tim Eyman is a lying, thieving, blowhard. But even Tim has never attempted to suggest that local revenue losses from I-864 might be offset by revenues from the 19,000 slot machines legalized by I-892.

And even if he had, The Olympian’s editors would have quickly discerned that I-864 and I-892 have absolutely nothing to do with each other… if only they had read the initiatives.

I-864 cuts regular local levies by 25%, and The Olympian performs a great service for its readers by so clearly explaining its devastating impact on libraries.

I-892 legalizes slot machines in neighborhood bars, restaurants, and bowling alleys, dramatically expanding gambling in our communities. It further mandates that all tax revenues generated by the estimated $23 billion in new wagering, be used to reduce the state property tax, dollar for dollar.

The initiatives leave the Legislature absolutely no discretion to offset the impact of one, with revenues from the other, and to suggest otherwise is to give the something-for-nothing crowd a glimmer of hope they do not deserve. If I-864 passes, local governments will not do “more with less.” They will do “less with less,” and it is a shame The Olympian dilutes this message with such a clearly erroneous aside at the end of an otherwise excellent editorial.

I know it sometimes sounds like I’m nitpicking, and I’ll be the first to admit that the media is doing a much better job educating the public about Eyman’s initiatives than they have in years past.

But it’s little misstatements like this that get picked up and repeated by others, that can be twisted to shape the public debate. Sometimes it happens through innocent water cooler conversation. And sometimes it happens through a columnist with an agenda.

Like most Americans, I haven’t yet had the opportunity to see Michael Moore’s new film, “Fahrenheit 9/11”, so I’m certainly not qualified to critique it.

But that doesn’t stop Seattle Times editorial columnist Collin Levey from attacking the film as a “dishonest infomercial” in her ideologically sanctioned screed, The Moore you know, the less you blame Disney.

Ms. Levey recently came to The Times, with some fanfare, from the Op/Ed pages of The Wall Street Journal: a prestigious publication with a well-earned reputation for thorough reporting and rabidly partisan, right-wing editorials.

Curious as to her journalistic rigor, I emailed Ms. Levey, asking her why she felt so comfortable characterizing as dishonest, a film she hadn’t seen. She curtly replied “You might find these useful:” and appended two columns by Alan Murray of — you guessed it — The Wall Street Journal. Barring clairvoyance, I can only infer that it was Mr. Murray’s description of the film from which she based her own impressions.

Of course, he didn’t see it either, but at least he bothered to tell his readers.

Ms. Levey, on the other hand, couldn’t spare a column inch to share her own methodology… which apparently consisted of a thorough reading of her former publication.

I’m guessing The Times didn’t know the bargain they were getting when they hired Ms. Levey. Not only do they gain the prestige of featuring a former WSJ editorialist, but they also get to harness the collected efforts of the colleagues she left behind.

If you’ve ever wondered what liberal critics mean when they refer to the “right-wing media echo chamber,” this is it. Whatever prompted Mr. Murray’s own ideological attacks, the party-line has now been repeated — indeed, amplified — in a local paper by a “local” columnist. The result (perhaps, the goal) is to transform a political charge into common wisdom… through sheer repetition.

The fact that Ms. Levey relies on the WSJ to support her thesis, understandably impresses her new bosses more than it does me. But the fact that she relies on the WSJ as the unattributed source of her thesis, should give us all pause.

I only hope that that The Times demands more journalistic rigor of its film reviewers than it does of its columnists.