Legal Commentary

Draft Letter to Vanity Fair (Ari Rides Again Dept.)

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

I was disappointed in the lax editorial standards which allowed former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer to use your pages (George in Real Life) lie to the public, unrebutted, yet again.

Mr. Fleischer is quoted as saying, “When Bill Clinton left office, he was a pariah.”

In fact, President Clinton left office with the highest approval ratings of any post-WW II President, something on the order of 66%. Any simple web search would have revealed this.

I think you owed your readers this fact — especially as it supports the suggestion, made later regarding a different assertion, that die-hard Bush fans are “delusional”.

Please invest in fact-checkers.

A. Michael Froomkin
Professor of Law
University of Miami
Coral Gables, FL

Any point in sending it?

Full post as published by Discourse.net on May 02, 2009 (boomark / email).