Scott Johnson

Remember that touching picture of Yassar Arafat donating his blood to the 9/11 victims that was conveniently published after CNN ran footage of Palestinians cheering and handing out candy to celebrate the destruction in New York? Now France 2 journalist Charles Enderlin says that photo was staged; Arafat never gave blood.

The photos were taken by an AP photographer with a history of biased journalism and given captions that read like “a press release covering talking points.” Power Line's Scott Johnson reported Enderlin's revelation in a January 24 Weekly Standard article (bold mine throughout):

As Joel Pollak recounted online at the site Guide to the Perplexed [ed. link here], Enderlin told his Harvard audience "that Yasser Arafat had faked his blood donation to the victims of the September 11th attacks. Enderlin said the event had been staged for the media to counteract the embarrassing television images of Palestinians celebrating in the streets after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks."

Scott Johnson at Powerline argues that liberal opinion journal The New Republic really needs a grown-up in charge to clean up the magazine's act:

Although the -- I believe the correct word is "venerable" -- Martin Peretz is nominally the editor-in-chief of the New Republic, the lack of adult supervision at the magazine has become painfully apparent in the course of the magazine's continuing Beauchamp disgrace. When are "the editors" going to render their verdict on their Baghdad Fabulist, anyway?

The lack of adult supervision at the magazine is apparent beyond the Beauchamp disgrace. Here the juvenile TNR staffer Joshua Patashnik does little more than direct sarcasm at the New York Times's relatively favorable review (by Carl Cannon) of Stephen Hayes's book on Vice President Cheney. Unlike Patashnik, Cannon actually shows evidence of having read Hayes's book.