{"id":375,"date":"2003-03-22T18:45:35","date_gmt":"2003-03-22T22:45:35","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=375"},"modified":"2007-03-17T10:54:04","modified_gmt":"2007-03-17T14:54:04","slug":"operation-second-wind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/?p=375","title":{"rendered":"Operation Second Wind"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, Peter Arnett, last seen in 1998 disseminating a virtually unsourced and utterly false tale about the U.S. Army using sarin against Vietnam War defectors in 1970, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bayarea.com\/mld\/mercurynews\/entertainment\/television\/5421896.htm\">is back<\/a>, armed with a <span class=\"booktitle\">National Geographic<\/span> press credential and reporting on the war for NBC. You can say what you like about lawyers, but if they get caught embezzling the escrow funds, it&#8217;s disbarment and that&#8217;s all she wrote. Arnett gets caught effectively making up a sensational story and publishing it under his own byline in <span class=\"booktitle\">Time<\/span>. He pleads in his own defense that the copy was handed to him, classily passing the buck to his colleagues. And not only does he not get fired &#8212; his producer, whom he hung out to dry, was canned, while his own contract was allowed to quietly expire &#8212; but he resurfaces a few years later on another major network! I wonder what Scott Fitzgerald was smoking when he said there are no second acts in American lives. Sometimes I think American lives consist of nothing <em>but<\/em> second acts. (Link from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.colbycosh.com\">Colby Cosh<\/a>.) <\/p>\n<p>(<b>Update:<\/b> Hey, great! Now he&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/story.news.yahoo.com\/news?tmpl=story&#038;u=\/ap\/20030330\/ap_wo_en_ge\/me_gen_iraq_arnett_1\">criticizing American military strategy for Iraqi TV<\/a>. Imagine that. Thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bias.blogfodder.net\">Susanna<\/a> for the link.)<\/p>\n<p>(<b>Further:<\/b> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/story\/0,2933,82656,00.html\">Canned<\/a>. Stay tuned for the third act.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, Peter Arnett, last seen in 1998 disseminating a virtually unsourced and utterly false tale about the U.S. Army using sarin against Vietnam War defectors in 1970, is back, armed with a National Geographic press credential and reporting on the war for NBC. You can say what you like about lawyers, but if they get <a href='https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/?p=375' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-politics","category-6-id","category-22-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}