Still Asking About the NRO

I decided to e-mail Katherine Jean Lopez directly to ask my NRO question about the NRO’s policy about the truth.

The text of my e-mail:

Why is it a big deal that the NRO printed erroneous information about the Hezbollah operations in Lebanon when the NRO prints information that is erroneous or misleading about the American economy, an issue that affects NRO readers directly?

I’ve seen it happen many times, but an obvious example comes courtesy of Larry Kudlow on the same day you printed a letter to your readers.

Kudlow wrote (http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NmZlZjlhYTFjYTQ2YWViZmE3MmUzNWQzODE3NDhhNTQ=)
that:

“Americans are working. The 4.7 percent unemployment number remains at an historical low.”

Now, the BLS (ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat1.txt) tells us that not only is this false, in 28% of all years for which they provide data at that table, the unemployment rate was below 4.7 percent. Its been more than a whole percentage point below that a few times, and once it was almost two percentage points below Kudlow’s “historical low”.

As an economist, I can think of other examples where it seems to me he’s made mistakes that are very misleading and which point a very different picture of the economy than an impartial look at the numbers would suggest. And I note that I can think of similar instances in posts by other people at the NRO.

So I really am curious – why the double standard.

Thanks.

cactus
www.angrybear.blogspot.com

Looking at the above letter, I should probably have run a grammar and spell check. Too late now…

I’ll let you know if she responds. If given permission, I will quote her.