Terry Krepel: Swine Flu Scaremongering: How Many People Will WorldNetDaily Kill?
It’s not often that a news organization is determined to kill off its readers, but that’s what WorldNetDaily seems to be doing in its wild fearmongering about the H1N1 swine flu vaccine.
WND has long fearmongered against vaccines. A 2007 issue of WND’s Whistleblower magazine was entirely dedicated to it. Among the articles included was this:
“Doctors’ group opposes all vaccine mandates.” The 4,000-member Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, established in 1943, has called for a moratorium on the government forcing any vaccines on the American people, warning, “Our children face the possibility of death or serious long-term adverse effects”
The AAPS is little more than a conservative advocacy group whose views WND has touted in the past. Indeed, the AAPS has peddled its own medical inaccuracies, such as a notorious 2003 journal article falsely claiming that leprosy had sharply increased due to illegal immigration.
A June 2007 column by WND managing editor David Kupelian, which also appeared in that magazine, encapsulates those anti-vaccine talking points. While Kupelian concedes that “vaccines have saved countless lives,” he is quick to add: “They also have a history of disastrous side effects and suspected or proven dangers – a dark downside utterly covered up by the public health establishment.” Kupelian goes on to attack the societal benefits of vaccination:
It’s critical to understand clearly that most “health officials” concerned with immunology are not focused on what is best for you and your individual child, but on what they perceive to be the best interests of the population as a whole. And from that macro viewpoint, they strive to maintain what they call the “herd immunity.” In other words, if large numbers of people opt out of vaccination, even for the most wholesome and sensible of reasons, the medical establishment will oppose it out of fear that once-eradicated (like smallpox) or near-eradicated (like polio) diseases will come back.
And yet, because there are real dangers to vaccines, we owe it to our children, to ourselves and to God to become informed, and then make our decisions based on what is truly right for us, not on other people’s notions of what they think serves the collective good. They might well be wrong.
Remember, despite the medical establishment’s paramount concern over “herd immunity,” we are not cattle.
Kupelian refused to point out the obvious — that vaccinations are the reason those diseases were all but eradicated, and if large numbers of people are not vaccinated against them, they will, in fact, come back.
A May 2008 column by WND editor and CEO Joseph Farah defended the idea that refusing to immunize one’s children is a good thing. In railing against an apparent decision by Texas officials to have the children of cultists that they have taken into custody vaccinated against the usual diseases, Farah asserted that the parents are “mothers and fathers made conscious and well-informed decisions not to immunize their kids because of the potential for dire health risks.” Really? How does Farah know this? Indeed, he offers no evidence that the parents “made conscious and well-informed decisions not to immunize their kids”; in fact, one can argue that, given that they are members of a polygamist cult, they have a demonstrated history of not making “well-informed decisions.”
A July 2008 article by Bob Unruh asserted, based on the claims of an blogger with no demonstrated medical expertise (and who describes himself as “retired from corporate”), that the nasal-ingested flu vaccine FluMist poses a great danger to children. While Unruh quoted from some MedImmune press release about expansion of flu vaccination recommendations, he does not give MedImmune any opportunity to respond to the attacks. Unruh also quoted Jane Orient of the AAPS without noting the group’s political affiliation or anti-vaccination activism.
WND has also long touted supposed links between vaccines and autism — specifically, the role of thimerosal, a preservative used in vaccines — defending it even as more evidence comes to light questioning such a link. For instance, a Feb. 28, 2008, article reporting on a government agreement to pay compensation to the parents of a child who developed autism after receiving a series of vaccinations distorts the case in question to promote its own anti-vaccine agenda. WND quoted only anti-vaccine activists and ignored other evidence in the case that weakened the argument of those activists.
However, as a March 7, 2008, Associated Press article noted, the child received five simultaneous vaccines as a toddler, after which she regressed into an autistic state. The parents, according to the AP, “were exploring two theories to explain what happened to [the child]. One is that she was born with the mitochondria disorder and the vaccines caused a stress to her body that worsened the condition. The other is that the vaccine ingredient thimerosal caused the mitochondrial dysfunction.”
Further, as a March 8, 2008, New York Times article reported:
The disease control centers, the Food and Drug Administration, the Institute of Medicine, the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics have all largely dismissed the notion that thimerosal causes or contributes to autism.
Five major studies have found no link, and since thimerosal’s removal from all routinely administered childhood vaccines in 2001, there has been no apparent effect on autism rates.
The Times article also stated:
“Let me be very clear that the government has made absolutely no statement indicating that vaccines are a cause of autism,” Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Thursday. “That is a complete mischaracterization of the findings of the case and a complete mischaracterization of any of the science that we have at our disposal today.”
Similarly, the AP article added:
“There are no scientific studies documenting that childhood vaccinations cause or worsen mitochondrial diseases, but there is very little scientific research in this area,” said Chuck Mohan, executive director the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation, a Pittsburgh-based group that raises money for research.
It’s a much more complicated case than the WND article made it appear. But WND did not feel compelled to report the full story.
As worries about H1N1 swine flu began to mount this year, WND seized on it to repeat its old anti-vaccine attacks, then ultimately filter them through its anti-Obama obsession.
In June, WND carried an ad reading: “Obama and super-flu … a connection? Globalist’s agenda of world population reduction by bio-weapon!” As blogger Richard Bartholomew detailed, the ad linked to a website asserting that the swine flu is “a bio-engineered weaponized ‘flu’ designed for mass population reduction.” The ad went on to state:
The Globalists (people who run the world and have 90% of all wealth, influence and authority) have elected to create total chaos to undermine and finish breaking the world’s economy so they can complete implementing the “New World Order” a fascist regime of world domination, brutal controls and Martial Law…The politicians who did this answer to the Globalists and not to those who elected them to office.
[...]
The Globalists dug up frozen 1918 flu death cadavers in Siberia, extracted the DNA of the deadly Spanish flu and combined it with the very deadly Bird Flu (H5N1), mixed it with Swine Flu (H1N1) and merged it with a “carrier agent” of the highly contagious generic flu we all get to trigger certain and rapid human-to-human transmission.
What the ad was actually selling was “MMS (Miracle Mineral Solution),” a “germicidal agent capable of attacking and killing even early stage ‘flu’ viruses. It operates without regard for the strain or variation that may evolve or be manufactured.” It could be yours for just $24.95. The operator the website, Bartholomew noted, is a man who runs a companion website called “SML”, or “Survive Martial Law,” with similar globalist conspiracy-mongering.
The website later stated (before it was shut down entirely; a copy is here): “We have removed our MMS and SML sites because of the need for people to understand what is really happening in the world and not just simple survival techniques when people still will spiral down to death regardless of what we do to keep you alive a little longer.” It goes on to state, “We have moved into the period of the Great Tribulation and soon the horrors beyond anything man has seen or done in all history will be our final lesson.”
(Then again, the removal of the MMS website may also be because that little potion has all the earmarks of a scam.)
An Aug. 31 article touting the latest Jerome Corsi Red Alert report claimed that the White House is “trying to cause a panic over a possible H1N1 virus that could inflict massive illness and death on the American people.” The goal,WND suggested, is “to use the pandemic panic to create enough fear that the American public will acquiesce to the passage of Obamacare.”
Corsi and WND engaged in more fearmongering, claiming that “a massive public relations program launched by the federal Center for Disease Control aimed possibly at creating the atmosphere in which U.S. citizens could be forced to take H1N1 vaccinations against their will.” WND ignored the possibility that such a campaign should be taken for what it actually is — an effort to save lives.
The article also stated: “Neurologists around the world have been warned to watch out for an increase in a brain disorder called Guillain-Barre Syndrome, or GBS, which was generated by a similar swine flu vaccine administered by the government by the Ford administration in 1976.” In fact, the 1976 vaccine was never definitively linked to GBS, which also “may be an extremely rare reaction to any vaccination.”
The article then asserted:
“Red Alert intends to closely watch how the H1N1 scare is handled by the White House,” Corsi wrote. “With the Obama administration intent on the government taking over major sectors of the private economy, we are concerned the swine-flu pandemic scare is simply another component of that socialist agenda.”
So what happens if low vaccination rates result in a swine flu epidemic? Can Corsi and WND be held liable for causing the deaths of Americans by their fearmongering?
In Sept. 1 and Sept. 3 articles on swine flu vaccines, reporter Chelsea Schilling referenced a claim by “investigative journalist Wayne Madsen” that “even scientists who helped develop a vaccine for small pox are saying they will not take the vaccine and urging friends and family to refrain from taking the injection as well.” But Madsen has a record of making dubious claims — including claims about Barack Obama’s birth certificate that apparently even WND didn’t find credible enough to embrace.
Madsen has already made one discredited claim about swine flu: that it is the result of “gene splicing” and could not have occurred naturally — an echo of the conspiracy-mongering WND advertiser from earlier in the year. In fact, research has shown that the progenitor for the virus first surfaced in pig farming and processing operations in 1998.
WND reported in October 2008 that one claim in a lawsuit filed by Philip Berg over Obama’s birth certificate was that “Wayne Madsen, Journalist with Online Journal as a contributing writer and published an article on June 9, 2008, stating that a research team went to Mombassa, Kenya, and located a Certificate Registering the birth of Barack Obama, Jr. at a Kenya Maternity Hospital, to his father, a Kenyan citizen and his mother, a U.S. citizen.” But WND has not referenced the claim since, suggesting that it doesn’t believe it to be true (despite WND’s history of reporting false claims on the subject).
Madsen has also claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is working with increasingly discredited birther lawyer Orly Taitz and conservative groups in the U.S. to use the birth certificate issue against Obama in retaliation for the Obama Administration’s pressure on Israel to restrict expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem. You’d think that this would be a claim tailor-made for WND, since it merges two of its favorite obsessions, the birther stuff and Aaron Klein’s efforts to portray Obama as pro-Muslim and anti-Israel (mostly through anonymous sources).
But WND has curiously kept its hands off that claim as well. Do they not believe it? Or are they a functioning part of Netanyahu’s conspiracy?
Given that WND apparently can’t trust Madsen’s reporting on other subjects it’s interested in, it’s strange that Schilling and WND have decided he is trustworthy on the subject of swine flu vaccines — even though he has previously been discredited.
Such freak-outs made it inevitable that WND’s first instinct after President Obama’s declaration of a national emergency over the H1N1 flu virus was to fearmonger.
The subhead of a Oct. 24 article by Drew Zahn read, “Is president’s proclamation formality, or institution of Obama martial law?” Zahn then focused on the latter, offering the possibility that “the Obama administration might use the declared emergency to suddenly expand government power,” citing a writer for InfoWars — not explaining that InfoWars is affiliated with conspiracy-monger extraordinaire Alex Jones. Zahn also cited “a WND reader in an e-mail” who allegedly wrote, “Here we go with martial law.” Zahn framed these as “rumors” that were “quick to flame” because the news media offered “little explanation” about what the emergency declaration meant.
Zahn curiously didn’t completely dismiss the InfoWars assertion that “we may witness a move toward martial law, forced vaccination and internment of those who refuse,” and indeed suggests that it’s a realistic possibility. It’s not until the seventh paragraph that Zahn finally broke away from the fearmongering:
But even if there really is a plot to manipulate the H1N1 virus scare into enforcing a sweeping expansion of federal power, today’s “national emergency” falls far short of martial law.
In fact, the laws enacted by the president’s proclamation do little more than clear administrative hurdles for quicker processing of Medicare payments, and the very provisions of the National Emergencies Act that the president cited in his proclamation actually limit the power his administration can take.
Why didn’t Zahn lead with that instead of indulging in fearmongering and media-bashing accusations? Because fearmongering is what WND does.
Joseph Farah spent his Nov. 2 column alternately downplaying fears about H1N1 and spreading fears about H1N1 vaccine. Farah began with the downplaying:
U.S. deaths have surpassed 1,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Nearly 5,000 have died worldwide, according to WHO.
That sounds bad.
But is it worth the hysteria?
What is it about these deaths that have government health bureaucracies apoplectic?
Is it time for a little context?
What happens when we turn to the same sources to compare deaths due to swine flu with other leading causes of preventable deaths?
Worldwide, nearly 3,000 people die from malaria every day.
Worldwide, nearly 6,000 people die from AIDS every day.
Farah doesn’t acknowledge the main differences: Unlike malaria, swine flu is not confined to Third World countries, and AIDS, unlike swine flu, is not an airborne disease.
Farah then wrote that “malaria could be eradicated much easier and more economically. But the most effective weapon in the arsenal against malaria, DDT, has been banned in the U.S. and much of the rest of the world, even though it saved the lives of tens of millions, because of pseudo-scientific hysteria about alleged, unproven environmental effects.”
In fact, contrary to Farah’s claims that DDT’s effects on the environment are “unproven,” it has been found to cause cancer, endocrine disruption and adversely affect the immune system (though some studies claim otherwise).
Now, on to the fearmongering:
While no one disputes DDT’s absolute effectiveness against malaria, there are no studies that prove the H1N1 vaccine actually prevents swine flu. In addition, many doctors consider it to be dangerous because it contains aluminum, a toxic metal, thimerosal, a mercury toxin and is believed to contain a squalene product that can injure the immune system.
In other words, the swine flu vaccine may not prevent people from getting the swine flu and it may well cause other problems more serious than the swine flu. The cure could well be worse than the disease.
First, some flu vaccines do not contain thimerosal. Second, as the CDC states:
Since 2001, no new vaccine licensed by FDA for use in children has contained thimerosal as a preservative and all vaccines routinely recommended by CDC for children under six years of age have been thimerosal-free, or contain only trace amounts, except for some formulations of influenza vaccine. Unfortunately, we have not seen reductions in the numbers of children identified with autism indicating that the cause of autism is not related to a single exposure such as thimerosal.
But that’s not good enough for Farah:
I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust the government to make medical decisions.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust the government to make rational public health decisions.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust the government to play doctor or, worse yet, play God.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust the government to make decisions that affect the lives and the health of my loved ones.
Does Farah think he’s more trustworthy than the government on life-and-death decisions? WND’s fearmongering has likely scared some people out of getting the vaccine who will, as a result, contract H1N1. A few of those people may die.
In other words, WND may very well be killing its readers.
Farah may not trust the government, but people would be absolute fools to take medical advice from him and WorldNetDaily.
(A version of this article appears at ConWebWatch.)
More on Swine Flu
Obama gives Afghan orders to military
President Obama has informed top diplomatic and military officials about his decision on new U.S. strategy and troop levels in Afghanistan, the White House said.
Added forces will be concentrated in southern Afghanistan
Officials say Helmand and Kandahar, where the Taliban’s roots are deepest, will see an influx of U.S. troops.
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Nawa, Afghanistan — When President Obama outlines his new strategy for Afghanistan in a speech Tuesday night, a pivotal element will focus on the country’s south, where an influx of troops will try to secure the Taliban’s spiritual center and seize a major center for bomb-making and drug-trafficking.
Video: Tackling Tough Issues
President Obama will soon shine the spotlight on two tough issues, Afghanistan and jobs. As Chip Reid reports, is there enough money to pay for what he wants to do?
Hondurans elect new president
Voters in Honduras have elected a new president, but it remained in question Monday whether the international community would recognize conservative candidate Porfirio Lobo Sosa.
Obama orders launch of Afghanistan strategy, prepares to address U.S.
After telling military leaders to put plans into action, the president calls world leaders to seek support. In Tuesday’s West Point speech, he is expected to announce specific numbers on troop levels.
Hours after issuing orders to launch his new strategy in Afghanistan, President Obama this morning began calling world leaders to tell them of his decision and ask for their assistance.
Obama Moves Toward New Pakistan Strategy
Washington Post: In Letter, Obama Offers Pakistani President New Expanded Ties, Warns About Insurgent Groups
Obama Afghanistan Speech: President To Detail Exit Plan
President Barack Obama plans to announce a redrawn battle plan for Afghanistan, including what the military says could be a roughly 50 percent increase in U.S. forces, in a national address Tuesday night from the U.S. Military Academy.
Although military and administration officials cautioned that Obama has not settled on a final figure, the military is planning for an increase of up to 35,000 troops begin next year. Military officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the president’s plans.
The addition forces would come atop a record 71,000 U.S. troops in the country now and would represent the largest expansion since the war began eight years ago.
Senior officials told the New York Times that Obama plans to lay out a time frame for winding down American involvement in the war.
It’s accurate to say that he will be more explicit about both goals and time frame than has been the case before and than has been part of the public discussion,” said a senior official, who requested anonymity to discuss the speech before it is delivered. “He wants to give a clear sense of both the time frame for action and how the war will eventually wind down.”
Obama will be speaking to a war-weary American public, with the Army’s storied academy at West Point, N.Y., as a backdrop and cadets entering the service most stretched by two wars on hand. Polls show support for the war has dropped significantly since Obama took office, with a majority now saying both that they oppose the war and that it is not worth fighting.
Michael Moore: An Open Letter to President Obama from Michael Moore
Dear President Obama,
Do you really want to be the new “war president”? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do — destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they’ve always heard is true — that all politicians are alike. I simply can’t believe you’re about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn’t so.
It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That’s the way General Washington insisted it must be. That’s what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. “You’re fired!,” said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in’ hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).
So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea — “Let’s invade Afghanistan!” Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin.
There’s a reason they don’t call Afghanistan the “Garden State” (though they probably should, seeing how the corrupt President Karzai, whom we back, has his brother in the heroin trade raising poppies). Afghanistan’s nickname is the “Graveyard of Empires.” If you don’t believe it, give the British a call. I’d have you call Genghis Khan but I lost his number. I do have Gorbachev’s number though. It’s + 41 22 789 1662. I’m sure he could give you an earful about the historic blunder you’re about to commit.
With our economic collapse still in full swing and our precious young men and women being sacrificed on the altar of arrogance and greed, the breakdown of this great civilization we call America will head, full throttle, into oblivion if you become the “war president.” Empires never think the end is near, until the end is here. Empires think that more evil will force the heathens to toe the line — and yet it never works. The heathens usually tear them to shreds.
Choose carefully, President Obama. You of all people know that it doesn’t have to be this way. You still have a few hours to listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking. You know that nothing good can come from sending more troops halfway around the world to a place neither you nor they understand, to achieve an objective that neither you nor they understand, in a country that does not want us there. You can feel it in your bones.
I know you know that there are LESS than a hundred al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan! A hundred thousand troops trying to crush a hundred guys living in caves? Are you serious? Have you drunk Bush’s Kool-Aid? I refuse to believe it.
Your potential decision to expand the war (while saying that you’re doing it so you can “end the war”) will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you’ve said and done in your first year. One more throwing a bone from you to the Republicans and the coalition of the hopeful and the hopeless may be gone — and this nation will be back in the hands of the haters quicker than you can shout “tea bag!”
Choose carefully, Mr. President. Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning.
We the people still love you. We the people still have a sliver of hope. But we the people can’t take it anymore. We can’t take your caving in, over and over, when we elected you by a big, wide margin of millions to get in there and get the job done. What part of “landslide victory” don’t you understand?
Don’t be deceived into thinking that sending a few more troops into Afghanistan will make a difference, or earn you the respect of the haters. They will not stop until this country is torn asunder and every last dollar is extracted from the poor and soon-to-be poor. You could send a million troops over there and the crazy Right still wouldn’t be happy. You would still be the victim of their incessant venom on hate radio and television because no matter what you do, you can’t change the one thing about yourself that sends them over the edge.
The haters were not the ones who elected you, and they can’t be won over by abandoning the rest of us.
President Obama, it’s time to come home. Ask your neighbors in Chicago and the parents of the young men and women doing the fighting and dying if they want more billions and more troops sent to Afghanistan. Do you think they will say, “No, we don’t need health care, we don’t need jobs, we don’t need homes. You go on ahead, Mr. President, and send our wealth and our sons and daughters overseas, ’cause we don’t need them, either.”
What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would your grandmother do? Not send more poor people to kill other poor people who pose no threat to them, that’s what they’d do. Not spend billions and trillions to wage war while American children are sleeping on the streets and standing in bread lines.
All of us that voted and prayed for you and cried the night of your victory have endured an Orwellian hell of eight years of crimes committed in our name: torture, rendition, suspension of the bill of rights, invading nations who had not attacked us, blowing up neighborhoods that Saddam “might” be in (but never was), slaughtering wedding parties in Afghanistan. We watched as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were slaughtered and tens of thousands of our brave young men and women were killed, maimed, or endured mental anguish — the full terror of which we scarcely know.
When we elected you we didn’t expect miracles. We didn’t even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn’t even function as a nation and never, ever has.
Stop, stop, stop! For the sake of the lives of young Americans and Afghan civilians, stop. For the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God’s sake, stop.
Tonight we still have hope.
Tomorrow, we shall see. The ball is in your court. You DON’T have to do this. You can be a profile in courage. You can be your mother’s son.
We’re counting on you.
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com
P.S. There’s still time to have your voice heard. Call the White House at 202-456-1111 or email the President.
More on Barack Obama
Geoffrey Dunn: Palin’s Latest Rogue Gaffe
There have been so many lies and distortions pointed out in Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue since it was released last week that her memoir has already become something of a gag line.
But perhaps the most embarrassing gaffe so far is her misattributed quote to UCLA basketball legend John Wooden.
As the epigram to Chapter Three, “Drill, Baby, Drill,” Palin assigns the following remarks to the Hall of Fame hoops coach:
Our land is everything to us… I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember our grandfathers paid for it–with their lives.
Only the quote wasn’t by John Wooden. It was written by a Native American activist named John Wooden Legs in an essay entitled “Back on the War Ponies,” which appeared in a left-wing anthology, We Are the People: Voices from the Other Side of American History, edited by Nathaniel May, Clint Willis, and James W. Loewen.
Here’s the full quote:
Our land is everything to us. It is the only place in the world where Cheyennes talk the Cheyenne language to each other. It is the only place where Cheyennes remember the same things together. I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember our grandfathers paid for it–with their life. My people and the Sioux defeated General Custer at the Little Big Horn.
Oops! That’s not quite the sentiment that Sister Sarah was trying to convey as she guzzled down sugar-free Red Bull and cranked up Toby Keith’s “How Do You Like Me Now?” while jumping on her patriotic high horse at the opening of the third chapter.
There’s also no small amount of irony in the quote, given Palin’s abysmal record on Alaska Native issues during her truncated term as governor.
I was a huge UCLA basketball fan as a kid. Whenever the Bruins came to the Bay Area, I did whatever I could do to snag a ticket. I loved to watch Wooden coach. But I never figured the Wizard of Westwood as an advocate for radical land distribution.
Obviously this one slipped by Sister Sarah and her crack team of investigative journalists Lynn Vincent, Meg Stapleton and Ivy Frye, as well as all those dutiful fact checkers at HaperCollins. Obviously, they didn’t get the quote from anything Wooden ever wrote, but from a cute little web site called The Quote Garden. Isn’t that sweet?
Okay, I was a little leery reading Palin’s book and wondering if she really had read Aristotle and Plato. Somehow I didn’t think so. But I thought, maybe, just maybe, she might have read Sir John. Apparently not.
But just because we’re all good sports here at HuffPo, I thought I’d save the former Governor (can you imagine what Wooden thought about her quitting?!) a little bit of time, and here are five actual Wooden quotes, courtesy of the Christian Science Monitor, that she might want to take to heart:
1. It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.
2. Failure is not fatal but failure to change might be.
3. What you are as a person is far more important that what you are as a basketball player.
4. Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
5. Never mistake activity for achievement.
We’ll see if the second printing carries a correction.
Award-winning writer and filmmaker Geoffrey Dunn’s book The Lies of Sarah Palin: The Untold Story Behind Her Relentless Quest for Power will be released by St. Martin’s Press in spring 2010.
More on Sarah Palin
