Update: And there’s none forthcoming…see the email from the L.A. Times below. I wrote earlier in the week about Los Angeles Times media critic Tim Rutten’s attempt to weigh in on the Beauchamp story with this piece that was riddled with factual errors. Rutten described the disfigured woman Beauchamp claimed to have mocked as Iraqi–even in Beauchamp’s imagination she was always American. Rutten said the editor at TNR had conceded that the story was “concocted.” It is, but they haven’t, choosing instead to shift its location to Kuwait. Rutten claimed TNR had been unable to communicate with Beauchamp. This is obviously untrue, they’ve been able to communicate with Beauchamp, they’ve just refrained from communicating the substance of those conversations to their readers. And finally, Rutten accused Drudge of reporting the existence of a “Memorandum for Record” and not posting a copy of it. Of course, Drudge did post a copy of it, but Rutten failed to read all the documents before filing his sorry excuse for a column. Since then, a number of bloggers have pointed out these serious factual errors, including Bob Owens, Mickey Kaus, and Patterico. Patterico has even taken the time to help Rutten craft a correction:
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