(via @jaketapper) The ironies abound in this passage from Jacob Weisberg’s rhetorical roundhouse kick to Ron Suskind’s face:
The most famous thing Suskind wrote about the Bush administration was a passage in an article he published in the New York Times Magazine, quoting an anonymous Bush “aide”:
“The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’ “
This became one of the most quoted lines about the Bush years, repeated thousands of times as evidence of his administration’s willful dishonestly about everything from Iraq’s WMD to the budget. “Reality-based” turned into a liberal slogan of the era, printed on T-shirts and bumper stickers. How could it not, given the deliciousness of the quote? But did anyone in the Bush administration ever say these words to Ron Suskind? He has never given us any reason to believe that anyone did. And given the unacceptable liberties he takes with quotes from named sources—see below—I have my doubts.
Let’s count them, shall we? Continue reading Slate sanctimoniously savages Suskind’s salacious stories.