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TNR Exposes Hoax (Really)

2:04 PM, Dec 29, 2008 • By MICHAEL GOLDFARB
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I've been tuned out the last week and missed this amazing story which features the New Republic(!!!) exposing phony war reporting "first-person meditations." If that wasn't enough, Noam Scheiber has this graph attacking Harris Solomon, the man producing a movie based on the bogus story and who prosecuted a vigorous, TNR-like defense of the lies contained therein:

In fact, there's ample proof that Rosenblat's story isn't true; by this point, the burden is on Rosenblat to provide corroborating evidence. What's "bloody repugnant" is that Salomon would try to ward off questions this way.

As always, the burden to provide corroborating evidence must fall on the author, and I share in the New Republic's outrage that those vested in the story would stall, ignore troublesome facts, and ultimately fall back on the moral authority of an author exposed to the hardships of war. You know what would be a real shame is if the publisher responded with a 6,000 word diatribe against his critics rather than just a brief apology for being taken in by a huckster.

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