Editor’s Essay: No Time to Admit Wrong

Ari L. NoonanEditor's Essays, OP-ED

Los Angeles Times Editor Davan Maharaj. Photo: Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times

When you are wrong, never  admit it.

Dig in.

Most opponents will wear down and wilt.

Holding one hand over each ear, two more over each eye, the left-wing Los Angeles Times blushed and swallowed its pride this morning in its latest error-choked lead editorial. If fibs were roses, the Times could stock the Rose Parade until the 22nd century without printing one more edition.

This is what the left historically does.

  •  When global warming could not be proven (17 consecutive years of unchanged temperatures and counting), switch the bogus claim to “climate change.” Nice and vague.
  •  When abortion could not be sold because its history was too ugly, the left deftly softened it to the esoteric phrase “reproductive rights.” Who could be against rights?
  • When gay marriage wasn’t selling, the left baffled the boobs with “marriage equality.” Nobody opposes equality.

Now it is the turn of the Sponge Bob-brained Army traitor:

The Times passed on taking an editorial stance yesterday while it figured out a foolproof argument on the day after Benedict Arnold’s great-great-great-great-great grandson, Army traitor Bowe Bergdahl, was charged with deserting to the enemy.

Given time to think up a palatable scenario, the Times this morning dropped into a CYA crouch in deference to its friend-benefactor-fellow bogeyman, President B.H. Obama.

Employing noble language in its headline, “We leave no soldier behind,” the Times sought to sound like a patriotic conservative while tiptoeing the opposite way.

Oh, really? Every soldier? Reasonable leftists and rightists can disagree on this gray point.

Land o’ Goshen, the Times contended in its flag-waving, bugle-blowing, red, white and blue editorial, sinless Mr. Obama had no choice but to bring home this ardent son of Washington-Lincoln-Roosevelt-Reagan.

The Times, uh, ignored Mr. Obama’s baloney-splattered Rose Garden ceremony with Benedict Arnold’s parents.

The Times, uh, ignored that slick Mr. Obama exchanged the five trashiest jihadists available for Mr. Arnold.

The Times, uh, ignored the traitor’s renunciation of his country, renunciation of his military mates, his undisputed walkoff, the sending home of all his belongings, his conversion to Islam, all that technical stuff.

The Times, uh, ignored Wake up Little Susie Rice’s newest lie about how her widely published praise of Mr. Arnold was intended to apply to his “courageous” decision to sign up with the Army in a time of war. With those kinds of writers on her staff, Wake up should detour to Broadway.

With the Star-Spangled Banner and God Save the (Drag) Queen playing in the background, the Times editorial said in a half-dozen separate places that the “naïve” traitor probably is innocent, but that innocence is a detail. He is, said the Times, while turning up the volume on the martial melodies, by thunder, worthy of rescue, worthy of repatriation, probably innocent although it does not matter, and by further thunder, President Obama “has no reason to apologize for delivering Bergdahl from such conditions, whatever the sergeant’s culpability may be.”

Turn up the music, Martha. I still can hear it. Huzzahs and Muslim halleluyahs for Benedict Arnold’s great-great-great-great-great grandson.