[tag]Karl Zinsmeister[/tag], the new White House domestic policy advisor, has every reason to be embarrassed by some of the over-the-top comments he’s made in recent years, but to go back and quietly [tag]change[/tag] [tag]embarrassing[/tag] published remarks when he hopes no one’s looking is a problem.
A magazine editor named to a top White House policy post, Karl Zinsmeister, altered his own quotes and other text in a published newspaper profile of him posted on the Web site of the magazine he has edited for more than a decade, the American Enterprise.
In response to queries from The New York Sun yesterday, the White House said all of the changes were to correct errors in the August 2004 article, which was written by Justin Park and published in a weekly newspaper, the Syracuse New Times.
There’s every reason to believe this is false. After the original 2004 article was published, with a series of harsh quotes attributed to Zinsmeister, he contacted the writer directly to praise the article and thank the interview for “an extremely fair and thoughtful treatment.” He never complained about having been misquoted.
Now that Zinsmeister is joining the [tag]Bush[/tag] gang, however, he decided it was time to touch the article up a bit to make his controversial comments less harsh. Without telling anyone at his magazine, Zinsmeister took a published version of the piece and made a few changes.
* Zinsmeister was originally quoted as saying, “People in Washington are morally repugnant, cheating, shifty human beings.” He changed “people in Washington” to “an ‘overclass’ in this country.”
* Zinsmeister was originally [tag]quote[/tag]d as saying he has “a strong distaste for the Washington elite,” which was altered to remove the word “strong.”
* Zinsmeister was originally quoted as questioning whether Bush has executed the war in Iraq well, but he changed the text to remove the concern altogether.
This won’t do.
For one thing, Zinsmeister’s editor at the magazine, Molly English, rejected the idea that he had to correct some errors.
“If there’s an inaccuracy, he should have called me or he should have called Justin,” Ms. English said. She said it was unethical for Mr. Zinsmeister to post an altered version of the story without permission. “It’s reprehensible, frankly,” Ms. English said. “Once this is published, it’s not his property. From that point in time, he can’t just pick and choose.”
But that’s exactly what Zinsmeister thinks he can do. He’s uncomfortable with some of the comments he made, so he decided it was time to “revise” history to make his comments more palatable. We’ve all been bothered by things we’ve said in the past, but this guy thinks he can change the record to be more politically palatable now that he has a key West Wing job.
Introducing Zinsmeister on Wednesday, Bush said he was appointing “an innovative thinker.” I guess it depends on what the meaning of “innovative” is.