Over at Boing! Boing!Boin, Xeni Jardin links to an “interview” with Karl Rove by Deborah Solmon in the New York Times and says,
Meant to blog this when it came out, but it’s one of the funniest/creepiest things I’ve ever read in the Times: a really odd Q&A with Karl Rove. By the time you reach the end, you half expect the guy to bust out the chianti and liver and start hissing at you:
Well of course it is funny and creepy because Deborah Solomon subscribes to the Xeni Jardin school of journalism — she doesn’t care about truth or accuracy but rather feels free to hide and manipulate what actually happened in order to make her subjects appear goofier and creepier.
Solomon’s interviews are remixed to the point that then-New York Times Ombudsman Clark Hoyt once wrote that the Times,
. . . should publish with each column a brief description of the editing standards: the order of questions may be changed, information may be added for clarity, and the transcript has been boiled down without indicating where material has been removed. If such a disclaimer destroys the illusion, maybe ‘Questions For’ needs to be rethought.
But hell, why take responsibility for our words when we can simply remix and unpublish?