So it was with true joy that I came across this article in Editor & Publisher:
A 2005 Iraq bet has stirred a war of words today between conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg and the founder of a liberal media-watchdog group.
Goldberg wrote on Feb. 8, 2005: "I predict that Iraq won't have a civil war, that it will have a viable constitution, and that a majority of Iraqis and Americans will, in two years time, agree that the war was worth it. I'll bet $1,000 (which I can hardly spare right now)."
Let's see, what's the date today? Why, it's February 8, 2007! Two years to the day after Goldberg broke out his crystal ball and made his idiotic prediction.
The 'founder of a liberal media-watchdog group' is Jeff Cohen of Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), who's calling in the marker. The problem? Goldberg won't pay.
"I will undoubtedly give more money to the USO and to similar charities in the future, as I have done in the past," [Goldberg] replied. "But I am adamantly opposed to jumping through hoops for the likes of Cohen and Co. Intellectual honesty requires that I admit that Cole would have won had he taken the bet. I have done that. ... I have no obligations to him or anybody else in this regard no matter how hard some people try to claim otherwise. ... When I give to charity, again, I will do it privately which is at it should be."
In other words, blah, blah, blah, wank, wank, wank...
Of course he's not going to pay. He offered the bet to middle east expert Juan Cole and Cole refused, reasoning that betting on the lives of iraqis was pretty much beyond offensive. So there's Goldberg's out.
But I'd be willing to bet (irony not intended) that he wouldn't have paid anyway. Again, Goldberg and O'Reilly are flipsides of the same coin -- can you imagine Bill O'Reilly ever admitting he was so completely offbase and that a prediction he'd made was positively bizarre?
Of course not. These guys are all talk, no brains.
Goldberg's original column is here. I reccomend it for the funny alone -- he's puffed himself up as a better expert on the middle east than the Middle East scholar from University of Michigan. Cohen's piece calling him on it is here.
Tags: news | politics | media | republican | iraq | morons | Jonah Goldberg | Jeff Cohen
