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July 22, 2008

The Dimwit Zone - New York Times Reporters Admitted to Hospital with Severe Brain Injuries

New York Times reporters Richard Oppel Jr. and Jeff Zeleny were admitted to Bellevue Medical Center earlier this afternoon. The two reporters, who had been tasked with making Barack Obama's Iraq tour look like a foreign-policy triumph, were complaining of severe head pain and uncontrollable nervous tremors.

Zeleny and Oppel collaborated on an above-the-fold front page story about Obama called For Obama, a First Step is Not a Misstep. Zeleny, who has been working for the Times since leaving the Chicago Tribune in 2006, says he felt a twinge of pain with the very first sentence:

The Iraqi government on Monday left little doubt that it favors a withdrawal plan for American combat troops similar to what Senator Barack Obama has proposed.

His co-author Richard Oppel initially thought the problem was stress. "When I saw Jeff turn pale and start rubbing his eyes, I thought he was just worried about the whole surge thing." Oppel was referring to an earlier incident in which a TV reporter asked Senator Obama if he had changed his opinion about whether or not the surge was a good idea. "Obama stammered helplessly for about two minutes before ducking the question completely. Laura Ingraham got a copy of the tape and the results weren't pretty. She has spies everywhere."

However, by the time the two reporters got to the point in the article where they matched Obama's one or two brigades a month plan to Iraqi minister Nuri al-Maliki's deadline of hopefully sometime in 2010, both reporters were feeling ill effects. "Anybody could look up the actual statements by the Iraqi government and see they had nothing in common with Obama's approach. What if people who see this article use the internet? It would be obvious we were stretching the truth to help the Democrats. That's supposed to be a secret!"

Later in the article, the reporters hedged a little.

The central tenet of Mr. Obama's foreign policy suddenly is aligned with what the Iraqia themselves now increasingly seem to want.

"That one was a little easier," according to Zeleny. "There's no way ordinary people can find out what the Iraqis themselves want. I mean, there's terrorists in Iraq, and we know they prefer Obama's plan. I'm sure there are others who agree with the terrorists."

The final blow came at the end of the article, when the two reporters had to somehow make John McCain's withdraw as soon as it's safe plan look completely different from the al-Maliki's hopefully 2010 plan while not exposing the shallowness of the similarity between al-Maliki's statement and the Obama plan. "I kept saying to myself Focus on the dates! Focus on the dates!," said Zeleny, "but there was this terrible pain behind my eyes, like somebody was inside my head twisting my brain into a pretzel."

Both men collapsed shortly after doing a final spell check.

According to a Bellevue neurologist who asked to remain nameless, Zeleny and Oppel are only the latest of a long list of journalists who have reported similar problems. "It's tough being a journalist right now. Obama supporters are always talking about what great judgment the guy has, but the only reason his Iraq plan isn't a complete cock-up is that the surge worked. Obama opposed the surge and McCain didn't. It does bad things to the brain when you try to wrap it around something like that."

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

# At Tue 8:19 PM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (1) | More The Dimwit Zone | Tags: Barack Obama brains campaign 2008 conservative foreign policy hospitals humor Iraq Jeff Zeleny John McCain journalism Laura Ingraham New York Times Nuri al-Maliki paranoia Richard Oppel Jr. satire

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Posted by: David at July 22, 2008 9:16 PM