You Only Get One Guess

The Christian Science Monitor profiles Yasser Arafat, and sums up his career like so:

In a tumultuous 40-year odyssey, Arafat has gone from armed revolutionary steeped in a violent struggle against Israel; to found Fatah, a militantly nationalist Palestinian organization, in the early 1960s; to peacemaker and 1994 Nobel Prizewinner; to the first elected Palestinian president; and now, to semisidelined leader.

Question: What word did they leave out of his bio?

If you didn’t answer “terrorist,” you owe me a dollar.

But there’s more.

The CSM says Arafat “has gone from armed struggle,” implying he no longer is a leader of soldiers and terrorists.

They mention his Nobel Peace Prize, without mentioning he rejected Israel’s generous peace offer in 2000, in order to have an excuse to start a new intifada.

They praise him as Palestine’s first elected president, but fail to say anything about how he cancelled plans to let the people vote for — or agaist — him a second time.

They call him a “semisidelined” leader, without revealing that Fatah still sends out suicide bombers on his command.

The CSM doesn’t sound very fair and balanced. It sounds like it’s on the other side.

UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein found the same story, but had a lot more fun with it than I did. (Note to self: drop the anger more often and just have some fun.)