And the Jayson Blair Award Goes To…

The Associated Press reports tonight that:

The head of a conservative lobbying group accused Newsday columnist Jimmy Breslin of making up quotes attributed to him in Wednesday’s column….
The Rev. Louis Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, said he has ‘‘never met Jimmy Breslin, never had the conversation described in his column today and never said those sentences to anyone in my life.”

There have been whispers in the journalism community before about Breslin’s columns; that they sometimes cross the line from truth to fable.
On the other hand, Shame.org has this to say about the fundamentalist minister:

Founder of “Traditional Values Coalition” said only heterosexual survivors of the Trade Center attack should receive benefits.
The Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman and founder of Traditional Values Coalition, said yesterday that public and private relief agencies providing assistance to the survivors of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks should not give aid to surviving members of gay partnerships.
Groups such as the Red Cross “should be first giving priority to those widows who were at home with their babies and those widowers who lost their wives,” Sheldon said. Assistance “should be given on the basis and priority of one man and one woman in a marital relationship.”

This is at least as loopy as what Breslin attributes to Reverend Sheldon. But if we’re not going to give Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass a pass for fabricating news, and we shouldn’t, then we have to hold Breslin to the same standards, regardless of his status as a journalism institution.
It’s hard to know the truth, however. Sheldon allegedly made the remarks attributed to him in 1992: since then acceptance of gay and lesbian lifestyles has grown tremendously (1992 was before the wildly popular “Will & Grace” and “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”). Even a benighted fossil like Sheldon might recognize that his remarks now expose him to ridicule.

Breslin Will Get No Easter Basket This Year

The Roman Catholic church in our precincts is under Cardinal Edward Egan. He speaks in words that belong on a wedding cake and is useless at a time like this.
We send young men to fight a worldwide religion and we haven’t heard a word from Egan, not a thought about who the other people are and why they hate us. I would say that he probably doesn’t know the first thing about Islam.
Jimmy Breslin, Newsday, Wednesday, April 7, 2004.

You Have to Go Out, But You Don’t Have to Come Back

This sent to me by my friend Jim in Pennsylvania. The seagoing equivalent of plowing your minivan into a state trooper’s car:
BARGE HITS MOORED U.S. COAST GUARD SHIPS
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A tug pushing two barges drifted into two U.S. Coast Guard ships at the north side of the Corpus Christi Inner Harbor at 4 p.m. Wednesday.
One of the barges struck both the Coast Guard Cutter Mallet , a 75-foot inland construction tender, and the Coast Guard Cutter Brant , an 87-foot patrol boat, both located at the Coast Guard harbor facility here.
No one was injured and neither of the ships or barges are taking on water. Though the two damaged ships will need to be repaired, no Coast Guard mission will be affected.
Personnel from Coast Guard Marine Safety Office Corpus Christi are investigating the cause of the accident.

From a U.S. Coast Guard Press Release.