The latest "vetting" of Dr. Ben Carson concerns something that happened when he was an undergrad at Yale which is mentioned in his book from 1990. According to Carson, there was an announcement in the Yale newspaper that exams in a psychology course had been inadvertently destroyed and that they would need to be retaken. He went to the make up exam as did others, but somehow, the others learned the truth and left. He was so absorbed in writing answers that he did not notice them leave. Yesterday, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal has questioned that account by pointing out that there was never any notice of destroyed exams or any of the other details reported by Carson. I don't want to go through the whole report. It was picked up by many other media outlets, however.
This morning, Dr. Carson tweeted out the news item from the Yale paper that the Wall Street Journal reporter said did not exist. It is just what Carson had said it was in his book published 25 years ago. It is hard to imagine that the Carson campaign was able to find the article so quickly but the WSJ reporter could not. Most likely, the reporter did not try to hard to find it.
In the tweet, Carson asks whether there will be an apology coming from the reporter and says that he doesn't think it likely. I think that the apology should come not just from the WSJ but from all the other media that ran with the story without even bothering to check on it.
Look, Carson is running for president, so checking him out is proper. But checking out details in his autobiography from 25 years ago is a bit much, particularly when these things keep coming back showing that he has been accurate in his statements. I understand that there are many in the media who are terrified at the prospect of an African American man who is intelligent, well spoken, inspirational, a Christian and a conservative Republican. He has the ability to speak to black voters and threaten the Democrats' dominance of that group. Even so, no matter how fearful the reporters are that their liberal allies could lose, they ought not engage in character assassination of this good man. They can fight him on his ideas, but not on his character. It's just wrong. (And, by the way, it just won't work.)
This morning, Dr. Carson tweeted out the news item from the Yale paper that the Wall Street Journal reporter said did not exist. It is just what Carson had said it was in his book published 25 years ago. It is hard to imagine that the Carson campaign was able to find the article so quickly but the WSJ reporter could not. Most likely, the reporter did not try to hard to find it.
In the tweet, Carson asks whether there will be an apology coming from the reporter and says that he doesn't think it likely. I think that the apology should come not just from the WSJ but from all the other media that ran with the story without even bothering to check on it.
Look, Carson is running for president, so checking him out is proper. But checking out details in his autobiography from 25 years ago is a bit much, particularly when these things keep coming back showing that he has been accurate in his statements. I understand that there are many in the media who are terrified at the prospect of an African American man who is intelligent, well spoken, inspirational, a Christian and a conservative Republican. He has the ability to speak to black voters and threaten the Democrats' dominance of that group. Even so, no matter how fearful the reporters are that their liberal allies could lose, they ought not engage in character assassination of this good man. They can fight him on his ideas, but not on his character. It's just wrong. (And, by the way, it just won't work.)
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