Fool Me A Hundred Times, Shame On You

At some point you'd expect the staff of the Washington Post to resent being played for fools. Not yet clear where that point is.

There's ANSWER, of course, noted here at PostWatch and comprehensively at Instapundit (whose links, I now see, date the whitewashing of ANSWER back to 2002, courtesy of our new friend David Montgomery).

Meanwhile at Newsbusters, MRC's Tim Graham does a little sleuthing about one of those Jane Q. Public protesters referenced by Petula Dvorak in the Post today:

One organizer, Patrice Cuddy, who the Post portrays as a "novice protester," says she has to pull off her "gardening gloves" every time a new protest rookie signs up. But she's not a novice, as she was quoted against the Iraq war before it even began in January 2003. A few weeks ago she held a sign reading "All Media Is A Mouthpiece for Government." But this Dvorak story and others show that there are clearly days where media outlets are a dishonest mouthpiece for the hard left.

And at NRO's Media Blog, Stephen Spruiell writes about the Post being suckered by  Native American activist Sarah James, a Gwich'in tribe leader who opposes ANWR oil drilling. That is to say, she opposes it now. As Thomas Humber writes in Human Events:

It’s a compelling story.  A poor Alaskan native tribe, calling itself “the Caribou people,” fights desperately to save the Porcupine Caribou herd, which roams the region, providing the tribe’s sustenance.  But that is not the whole story; it is far from the whole truth.

If James tells Congress the whole truth, she will say that in 1971 the Gwich’in was virtually alone among native tribes in electing not to participate in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA).  To have done so would have required sharing, with the other tribes, in Alaskan natural resource revenues.  Instead, the Gwich’in chose to own, control and keep for themselves all revenues from 1.8 million acres in their former reservation.

If James tells Congress the whole truth, she will say the Gwich’in actively and aggressively sought oil exploration on Gwich’in lands until it was discovered Gwich’in lands contained no oil. She will say the Alaskan Gwich’in twice leased land to the oil companies she so vilifies today and tried unsuccessfully twice again.  She will say in 1984 she herself signed a request for proposal from oil companies to drill in the totality of Gwich’in lands.  She will say in 2001 the Gwich’in across the Canadian border formed a corporation for oil exploration...

If James tells Congress the whole truth, she will say the Gwich’in don’t live in ANWR, much less anywhere near the proposed drilling site, so her frequent use of the word “local” is a somewhat stretched euphemism. The Inupuit are local to the proposed drilling site, and the Inupuit support exploration....

Substitute "Congress" with "The Washington Post," and you get the idea. None of this information is included in its account, written by Vanessa de la Torre. Nor is the fact that the caribou population where we're already drilling, around Prudhoe Bay, has increased by about six times.

As Tim Graham wrote me in an email today, "Are these people allergic to Google?"