When it comes to embarrassing media mistakes, NBC News may not have won the day with this item yesterday afternoon. But it deserves honorable mention because the piece is still up on the web despite so many people pointing out on social media that it is quite clearly wrong.
In case it gets taken down, here are the opening grafs:
As a Student, SCOTUS Nominee Gorsuch Supported Gays and Opposed Campus Military Recruiters
President Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court has been vague about gay marriage and other issues important to the LGBTQ community, but back when he was an undergraduate at Columbia University he opposed military recruiting on campus precisely because it discriminated against gays and lesbians.
“It is an accepted fact that all four branches of the U.S. military discriminate against men and women based on their sexual preferences,” Neil Gorsuch wrote in an opinion piece for the Columbia Daily Spectator that was published in February 1987.
“This kind of discrimination just doesn’t fit in with Freedom of Opportunity and Democracy,” he wrote. “Plain and simple. Unless it’s prepared to hire applicants regardless of race, sex, class, religion, or sexual preference, the military should be denied the use of Columbia facilities to recruit.”
Whoa, if true. Except it isn’t true. Gorsuch didn’t write that. Jason C. Myers wrote that, whoever he is.
If you look closely at the original Spectator piece (it begins on page 7), it’s pretty obvious that the editor mis-labeled the “jumps” on page nine. Gorsuch’s column continues under the header “Myers,” and Myers’ column continues under the header “Gorsuch.”
Otherwise, you have to believe that Gorsuch wrote the following sentence:
Diversity means, [Jump] workers.
It’s a lot easier to believe that he wrote:
Diversity means, [Jump] rather, the entire spectrum of experience: from Young Americans for Freedom to Young Socialists of America.
Gorsuch was writing a piece on the diversity of thought at Columbia. Myers was writing the sort of left-wing omnibus column that you expect from a campus publication, covering everything from student debt to apartheid to aid to the Contras, and finally advocating a ban on military recruitment on campus.
Five minutes of reading could have cleared that up.
