New WH Policy Aide Changed Quotes In Article, Now Sounds Like a Slightly Different Kind of Jerk

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The White House’s replacement for accused kleptophile Claude Allen seems to have strange habits of his own. The New York Sun‘s Josh Gerstein reports that Karl Zinsmeister, Bush’s pick to be his new domestic policy adviser, “altered his own quotes and other text” in a newspaper profile of him reprinted on his organization’s web site.

In other words: He posted the profile — with the reporter’s byline, and a credit to the newspaper — but changed his quotes and other details.

Zinsmeister’s “improved” story doesn’t make him sound much more likeable. For instance:

Old quote: “People in Washington are morally repugnant, cheating, shifty human beings.”
New quote: “I learned in Washington that there is an ‘overclass’ in this country stocked with cheating, shifty human beings that’s just as morally repugnant as our ‘underclass.'”

Old description: [Zinsmeister has] “a strong distaste for the Washington elite.”
New description: [Zinsmeister has] “a distaste for the Washington elite.”

Zinsmeister’s improved profile was posted on the website of American Enterprise magazine, for which he was an editor. The magazine is published by the conservative American Enterprise Institute. (via The Plank)

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