White Wash from the Gray Lady

Ed Driscoll has gathered up more damning material than you’ll find in one place outside of Leviticus, but it’s this last bit that grabbed me:

Speaking of bad timing, talk about an ill-conceived moment for the Gray Lady to break out her airbrush once again: “New York Times quietly changes published editorial to make it less damning of Obama:”

The New York Times edited its damning editorial condemning the Obama administration for collecting phone call data from Americans to make it less stinging shortly after the editorial was published online Thursday afternoon.

The editorial originally declared that the Obama “administration has lost all credibility” as a result of the recently revealed news that the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been secretly collecting call data from American users of Verizon under the authority of the Patriot Act.

But hours later the stinging sentence had been modified to read the Obama “administration has now lost all credibility on this issue.”

So the Gray Lady memory holes its original op-ed on Obama’s Orwellian activities? I’d mention Times editor Jill Abramson gushing in 2011 that “In my house growing up, the Times substituted for religion. If the Times said it, it was the absolute truth,” but that article was memory holed as well by the Times. Though, as with today’s op-ed, not before it appeared on numerous Websites. I suspect the Times’ original take today on Mr. Obama is the one that most people will stick with — as with George Lucas constantly revising his Star Wars movies, sometimes the first draft is best.

Ed’s piece is titled “Let it burn.”

At this point, I don’t think there are enough fire trucks in the world to stop the flames.