28 June 2011

Defending James Gill


Mark Moseley either doesn't understand sarcasm or he deliberately edited Gill's Sunday column to make a point:


"When it comes to weird and slippery, Weiner’s got nothing on Vitter

By Mark Moseley, The Lens opinion writer |
The senator is seemingly invulnerable to his sex scandals.
James Gill of The Times-Picayune is probably the region’s most talented political columnist, yet he’s not immune from the occasional howler. Consider this excerpt from his Sunday column:
A strong case could be made that [Sen. David] Vitter is neither so weird nor so slippery as [Rep. Anthony] Weiner, who, when questioned about pictures of bulging underpants distributed on his Twitter account, lied through his teeth for several days until he was finally forced to come clean.
Fates preserve us! If lying about tumescent tweets for a week is the benchmark for “weird and slippery,” how can Gill possibly discount Vitter? Our junior U.S. senator is the king of weird slipperiness, if not slippery weirdness. Vitter lied through his teeth for nearly a decade about his chronic and illegal whore-chasing, yet neither the local media, nor fellow Republicans, nor Louisiana voters ever forced him to come clean. He’s still in office. Let’s see Weiner pull that off! I invite anyone to make “a strong case” for Vitter over Weiner. Please make that case, right here, I beg you. No, I double dog dare ya."

The problem is that he deleted Gill's next sentence. If he had printed it, the sarcasm would have been drippingly obvious. To wit:

"A strong case could be made that Vitter is neither so weird nor so slippery as Weiner, who, when questioned about pictures of bulging underpants distributed on his Twitter account, lied through his teeth for several days until he was finally forced to come clean.
Climbing in the sack with hookers seems positively conventional by comparison."

This sort of editing bothers me because Mark Moseley misquoted James Gill by deletion so he could attack David Vitter. David V is very easy to attack and there is no need to abuse James Gill to do it.


So, Mark, I would say that the howler is yours, not James Gill's.


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