Smear Without Fear

New York Times good-guy columnist Paul Krugman gets the goods on David Letterman's near scuffle with the White House:

On Monday, Mr. Letterman ran a video clip of a boy yawning and fidgeting during a speech by George Bush. It was harmless stuff; a White House that thinks it's cute to have Mr. Bush make jokes about missing W.M.D. should be able to handle a little ribbing about boring speeches.

CNN ran the Letterman clip on Tuesday, just before a commercial. Then the CNN anchor Daryn Kagan came back to inform viewers that the clip was a fake: "We're being told by the White House that the kid, as funny as he was, was edited into that video." Later in the day, another anchor amended that: the boy was at the rally, but not where he was shown in the video.

On his Tuesday night show, Mr. Letterman was not amused: "That is an out and out 100 percent absolute lie. The kid absolutely was there, and he absolutely was doing everything we pictured via the videotape."

But here's the really interesting part: CNN backed down, but it told Mr. Letterman that Ms. Kagan "misspoke," that the White House was not the source of the false claim. (So who was? And if the claim didn't come from the White House, why did CNN run with it without checking?)

Click here for more of the Krugman essay. Click here to see the Late Show clips "Bored Bush Boy" and "An Apology from CNN."

It now appears that the "slime and defend" technique employed by the Bush administration against its high-profile detractors isn't just for public servants and policy wonks: comedians beware. Is Leno next? (Check out this video clip about fifty seconds in...)

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