Washington Posts Attacks McCain for Quoting Washington Post

From the Corner -National Review...




Also read the amazing article first hand in the WaPo, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/09/obamas_fannie_mae_connection.html, they actually dismiss their own story.





Washington Post Faults McCain For Relying On...Washington Post [Byron York]
A number of journalists are trying hard to fit McCain's "Advice" ad into the now-established theme of the McCain campaign employing lies and underhanded tactics. The Obama campaign says the ad is a lie. Writers at Time and the Atlantic have suggested that it has racist overtones, because Franklin Raines is black, and Obama is black, and a photo depicting a generic victim of their alleged financial wrongheadedness is of a white woman.Now, the Washington Post fact checker takes McCain to task for relying on…the Washington Post. Yes, the paper reported in July that Raines had "taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters," and in August called Raines a "member of Mr. Obama's political circle." But hey, the Post says now, that information originally came from the Style section, and it came when a Post reporter was "chatting" with Raines at a photo shoot. Raines apparently said he had gotten, in the reporter's words, "a couple" of calls from the Obama campaign. When the reporter asked what about, Raines said, "Oh, general housing, economy issues." So the reporter wrote that Raines had "taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters." So now, the Post says McCain "is clearly exaggerating wildly in attempting to depict Franklin Raines as a close adviser to Obama on 'housing and mortgage policy.'"But the McCain commercial never called Raines a "close adviser" or a close anything. As far as "housing and mortgage policy," given that the Post had written — and has not retracted — that Raines had discussed "mortgage and housing policy" matters with the Obama campaign, in what sense is that a wild exaggeration?Oh, and by the way, just for good measure, the Post brings up the racial issue, too — noting without any other comment that the McCain ad "attempts to link Obama to Franklin Raines, the former CEO of the bankrupt mortgage giant, Fannie Mae, who also happens to be African-American. It then shows a photograph of an elderly white woman taxpayer who has supposedly been 'stuck with the bill' as a result of the 'extensive financial fraud' at Fannie Mae."
P.S. And now, of course, the Obama campaign is sending out emails quoting the Washington Post charge that McCain is "exaggerating wildly."
P.P.S. A reader reminds me that I should have double-fact-checked the fact-checker. The original Post profile of Raines apparently ran in the paper's Business section, not Style, as the fact-checker said.