The Washington Post takes a shamefully slippery slide off the path to truth, dragging Democratic civility with it

Before this controversy gets drowned out by whatever the next controversy turns out to be, I need to say something cranky about Bernie Sanders’ attack on Hillary Clinton’s qualifications, which was prompted by a headline in the Washington Post.

Here’s the headline: “Clinton questions whether Sanders is qualified to be president.”

What’s that sound like to you? To me, it sounds as if Hillary, by “questioning” Sanders qualifications, is saying he isn’t qualified. If I do think somebody is qualified, I wouldn’t question their qualifications.

The misleading headline was exacerbated by the Washington Post's lede, which repeated and thus reinforced the false claim. It said, “Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton on Wednesday questioned whether her rival in the Democratic presidential primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) is qualified to be president.”

Not surprisingly, Sanders struck back against what appeared to be a deliberate kick to the groin. His counterattack left no room for doubt that if Hillary takes the low road, he can do so too. If you can bear a few seconds of intrusive advertising before the newsclip, here’s what Sanders said:

Now someone at the Post has gotten defensively self-righteous about what was, at the very least, a reporting mistake exacerbated by a sloppy editing oversight. I’m not saying the Post is deliberately misleading its readers. I’ll leave that conclusion, or its opposite, to you.

A new Washington Post headline announces, “Sanders’s incorrect claim that Clinton called him ‘not qualified’ for the Presidency.” 

Notice, it doesn't say the Post was incorrect. It says that Sanders was incorrect for believing the Post's false headline and story copy. And that's what gets my goat.

The basis for the Post's perfidious  self-absolution is a lengthy, tangled, argumentative attempt to parse its own copy, along with he-said she-said quotes and a self-pitying whine that writing and displaying an accurate news story is hard. Oh, boo hoo!

“Headline writing is an imperfect art,” the Post sniveled. “The editor often has to summarize the meaning of a complex and nuanced article in just a few words. Many Washington-based reporters have experienced the frustration of having an accurate article denied by an agency spokesman because of a headline that went a little far off the mark.”

In other words, to echo what Barbie Doll was once crucified for saying about math when you pulled the string in her back, newspaper editing is hard.

You can try, if you’re courageous enough and you’ve taken your Ritalin today, to read the Post's whole convoluted self-justification for having committed the political equivalent of throwing a lighted match into a can of gasoline here. 

Frankly, I’m not buying the Post’s unapologetic apologia.  The headline could simply have said something like, “Clinton criticizes Sanders for lack of preparation,” which is what the story was really about once you get past the lede.

But that wouldn’t have made a sensational, newspaper-selling  story.

So now we have mud flying back and forth between the Clinton and the Sanders camps. Less civility, but more raw meat for the Washington Post, sparked by the sloths or dissemblers (take your pick) who write and edit stories there. 

Sadly, the ultimate victims are the American public, including those of us who live far from the Post's circulation zone. We are interested in learning about differences in policy, not in hearing the slosh of mud. That interest has been demonstrated by, among other things, the slow fall from favor of Donald Trump, the mudpie champion of the world.

The entire Washington Post staff, starting at the top, needs to be sent to bed without its supper.