Jerome a Paris points us to this
"interesting" piece.
In it, Daniel Henninger, Deputy Editor of the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page, wrote:
At the risk of enabling, does the Internet mean that all the rest of us are being made unwitting participants in the personal and political life of, um, crazy people?
I wondered whether the insane dominated political discourse LONG BEFORE the advent of the Internet. For example, this story, that was legitimized by the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page, made me wonder for the sanity of those who took it seriously:
Among the allegations spread by Citizens for Honest Government's paid "expert witnesses" was that Bill Clinton, as governor of Arkansas, provided protection for the cocaine trade.
. . . [W]hat ultimately legitimized the allegations was a series of editorials and articles on the subject that appeared in 1994 on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. Rep. Jim Leach, (R-Iowa), chairman of the House Banking Committee, acknowledged in an interview in the fall of l996 that he had directed his committee staff to conduct a comprehensive investigation of the Mena allegations after first reading about them in the Wall Street Journal.
(Emphasis supplied.) And of course, for 8 long years, the insanity of the Wall Street Journal Editorial Pages was so pervasive AND contagious that our political life was "unwittingly" made captive to their insanity. When Clinton left office in January 2001, the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page had a head explosion, calling for Clinton's indictment:
In an extraordinary editorial published January 5, [2001] the Wall Street Journal has demanded that Independent Counsel Robert Ray indict President Clinton on criminal charges as soon as he leaves the White House. The page-length diatribe in the leading US right-wing newspaper is headlined "Yes, Indict Clinton."
(Emphasis supplied.) So Henninger makes a good point - we must be careful not to allow THAT type of insanity to dominate our political discourse again.