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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Dec. 29, 2008 / 2 Teves 5769

Don't believe everything you read

By Jeff Jacoby

Jeff Jacoby
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken." So wrote Oliver Cromwell in 1650, and the world would be a better place if Cromwell's words were prominently posted over the desk of everyone who works in the pundit racket — those who get paid to tell the world what they think, but too infrequently pause to consider, let alone confess, that they might not always know what they're talking about.


Like weather forecasters and economists, those of us in the commentariat get paid even when we're wrong. If we didn't — well, just think of the political sages who would have been pounding the pavement after asserting confidently that Mitt Romney was sitting pretty in Iowa and New Hampshire, or that Barack Obama had no chance of defeating the Clinton machine. Fortunately, error — even egregious error — isn't usually a hanging offense in this business. Just ask Dick Morris, the Fox News/New York Post commentator, who wrote a book in 2005 called Condi vs. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race. Or Shelby Steele, the Hoover Institution scholar and frequent op-ed essayist whose latest book, on the Obama phenomenon, was titled A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win.


BusinessWeek was chortling recently over a list of what it labeled "truly spectacular" wrong calls about 2008, such as President Bush's soothing analysis of the economy last March ("The market is in the process of correcting itself") and Jim Cramer's response on CNBC's "Mad Money" to a viewer who was thinking of dumping his Bear Stearns stock ("No! No! No! Bear Stearns is fine! Do not take your money out . . . Bear Stearns is not in trouble!").


But not every howler made the BusinessWeek list. For example, it didn't include this elaborate forecast, which proved to be mistaken in every detail:


"New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will enter the presidential race in February, after it becomes clear which nominees will get the nod from the major parties. His multiple billions and organization will impress voters — and stun rivals. He'll look like the most viable third-party candidate since Teddy Roosevelt. But Bloomberg will come up short, as he comes in for withering attacks from both Democrats and Republicans. He and Clinton will split more than 50 percent of the votes, but Arizona's maverick senator, John McCain, will end up the country's next President."


That impressive string of blunders was one of "Ten Likely Events in 2008" foretold by — yes — BusinessWeek back on Jan. 2. Anyone can make a bad call, of course, but it generally takes a professional — a paid journalist or expert analyst — to be wrong about something so comprehensively (and publicly).


Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, nicely illustrates the point in the November issue of Commentary magazine. He rounds up the reaction of much of the punditocracy to the 2007 change of strategy in Iraq — the "surge" that led to such remarkable progress in the war. As Wehner shows, one commentator after another expressed not just doubt about the surge, but utter contempt for it.


Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post assured readers that the surge "could only make sense in some parallel universe where pigs fly and fish commute on bicycles." Time's Joe Klein derided it as "Bush's futile pipe dream." Former ambassador Peter Galbraith explained in the New York Review of Books that the surge "has no chance of actually working." And Jonathan Chait announced in the Los Angeles Times that there was "something genuinely bizarre" about anyone who would support the new strategy. "It is not just that they are wrong — being wrong happens to all of us from time to time. It's that they are completely detached from reality."


Do tell. (I was wrong, too. A month before Bush announced the surge, I wrote that his sagging approval ratings would surely revive if only he would "make it clear that he is serious about victory" in Iraq and "will do whatever it takes to achieve it." Two years later, Iraq is in vastly better shape, but Bush's approval numbers are even worse.)


"Think it possible you may be mistaken." My resolution for 2009 is to keep Cromwell's reproach in mind with every column I write. I'm not planning to get anything wrong, but it's been known to happen.


Caveat lector.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Jeff Jacoby is a Boston Globe columnist. Comment by clicking here.

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