Indis Hall of Fame: We Have a Winner!
The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal today enters
Chatterbox's Indis (i.e., Intellectual Dishonesty) Hall of Fame
for its persistent refusal to make note in its coverage of Juanita Broaddrick's
rape allegations that a key corroborating witness has a serious potential
grudge against Bill Clinton: Her father's murderer had his sentence commuted by
one Gov. Bill Clinton.
"You will note that my piece reported four witnesses," the Journal
editorial page's Dorothy Rabinowitz writes Chatterbox today. Er, whoops, that's
right. (Previously Chatterbox had suggested that the existence of the
additional witnesses had gone unreported until last week's NBC broadcast.
Chatterbox acknowledges and regrets this error.) These four witnesses told NBC
they heard Broaddrick talk about the alleged rape around the time it allegedly
occurred in 1978. Four witnesses is better than one, and the number does
diminish, somewhat, the significance of any potential grudge that may be held
by one of them. (Or, actually, two of them; Chatterbox will get to that in a
bit.) Still, the Journal editorial page should have mentioned the
potential grudge--if not in its initial story then in one of the two follow-ups
that have appeared since--just as the Washington Post, the New York
Times , and NBC News did in their more responsible coverage.
(This might be a good moment to review Chatterbox's scoring procedure. The
Journal 's editorial page scored one point for the original
omission in its Feb. 19 piece; four points for the continued omission in
two follow-ups; and six more points for every day of publication since
the original offense. That's eleven . Ten gets you into the Indis Hall
of Fame . Twenty points gets you a faxed likeness of Joseph Stalin.)
Incidentally, in overlooking Rabinowitz's mention of the four witnesses,
Chatterbox also overlooked Rabinowitz's inaccurate description of them. "They
[i.e., NBC] had four witnesses giving corroborating testimony--citizens with
nothing to gain [italics mine] and possibly much to lose by going
public," Rabinowitz wrote on Feb. 19. Nothing to gain? What about
vengeance? One of these witnesses was Norma Kelsey, the woman whose father's
murderer had his sentence commuted by Gov. Clinton. (Kelsey is the only witness
who allegedly saw Broaddrick on the day of the alleged rape, and witnessed the
bruised lip, torn panty hose, etc.) Another was Norma Kelsey's sister. Based on
what we know, then, only two of these citizens can really be said to
have "nothing to gain."
Anagram update: William Tunstall-Pedoe, who maintains the Anagram Genius site (and
whose own name sounds like an anagram for something else) informs Chatterbox
that the author of the anagram praised in this space last week (see "Beyond
'God' and 'Dog' ") is one Martin Eiger. Apparently Eiger published his
discovery in the November 1998 edition of the National Puzzlers' League's
journal, The Enigma .
As a tribute to Mr. Eiger's achievement, and to the distinguished reportage
today ranked--by Dorothy Rabinowitz and several other New York University
judges--as the 100 best works of 20 th century journalism,
Chatterbox offers the following anagrams for "Harvest of Shame," CBS's justly
celebrated 1960 documentary on migrant workers (anagrams courtesy of Anagram
Genius):
Hash Fearsome TV
Haves Hate Forms
Oh! Save the Farms
--Timothy Noah
