Right Wing

What do former Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig, Jr., former CIA director James Woolsey, White House advisor Richard Perle, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, American Enterprise Institute's Michael Ledeen, and dissident Iraqi nuclear scientist Dr. Khidir Hamza have in common? For one thing, they all have the PR expertise of Eleana Benador behind them.

Ever since TV talking head Paula Zahn jumped to CNN from Fox News Channel last fall, her former employers have badmouthed her relentlessly. "The jibes are sometimes brutal, sometimes humorous and once even profane," writes David Bauder. "The underlying message seems clear: It's not wise to cross Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes." In an interview, Ailes compared Zahn to a "dead raccoon." Radio shock jock Erich "Mancow" Muller, a vassal of the Fox empire, called her a "knucklehead" and said, "I just want to punch her in the face. ... I'll kill you, Paula. We will kill you, Paula."

"The myth that the National Educational Association told teachers not to blame Sept. 11 on al-Qaida continues to unravel," reports Brendan Nyhan. "It's now clear that Washington Times reporter Ellen Sorokin based her original myth-creating article on a preliminary NEA Web site that clearly wasn't complete, misconstruing quotations from a recommended sample essay allegedly written by a professor named Brian Lippincott and attributing them to the NEA.

Did America's largest teachers union construct a subversive web site concerning September 11? This nasty slander against the National Education Association has been spreading across the Internet, sparked by a series of articles in the Washington Times.