In a remarkably sophomoric article (even for the Washington Post) entitled "Abortion Could Be Sleeper Issue in Supreme Court Confirmation Process," Michael D. Shear gets today's award for "Thinking I'm Clever Because I See What's Overwhelmingly Obvious to Everybody Else."Since Roe v Wade in 1973, abortion has always been THE issue in every Supreme Court confirmation process. There is no real question about it. And Elena Kagan's confirmation battle is certainly no exception. Yet the Post thinks it's on to something novel here, something under the radar. Could it be that they really read nothing else than their own newspaper?
But Shear isn't just "ordinarily" clueless in his article. He manages to so ignore the known facts that he believes Ms. Kagan might well support tougher restrictions on abortion, drawing the inference that Barack Obama may thus be able to "mute right-wing groups."
Now that is novel.
With such an outlandish passage, I might think that Michael D. Shear was deliberately distorting the case due to liberal prejudices. That has been known to crop up every once in awhile at the Washington Post. But the disorganized structure and poor writing of the piece makes me believe it's more a matter of "Shear incompetence."
How else could one explain the reporter's horrible word picture describing how Democrats were hoping for a fight over abortion so they could, excuse me, "whip up women, who are a key Democratic constituency?"
No, I think Shear must just be a lousy writer; not even a Post writer could be so conniving a cad.
