They have to say Prosecutor specifically in the hypothetical, which they intend to be misread as a factual, because otherwise it would be calling out Trump.
What if every time Peggy Noon invents a New Yorker she kayfabe met on the subway or at a deli, in some distant universe, that imaginary figment is made manifest.
A whole multiversal NYC, populated by millions of living fake anecdotes where Noonan is their oblivious and ambivalent god-creator.
"Hypothetically of course* has to be removed from acceptable rationale for publishing and promoting lies. Great classroom exercise and a really good strategy for promoting disinformation.
The purpose of the WSJ opinion section is to be always wrong so that if you ever find yourself agreeing with it you know that your thinking took a bad turn.
Technically, many of them are editors, so they could ask, get “probably” and then just go ahead and print. They probably do stuff like that all the time.
But holy shit, I think that Peter and I actually did flag a few things with that kind of email question back in ‘00-01 period when we were putting the stuff onto the website. He’d been reading From Beirut to Jerusalem so had facts, and I just try to be helpful when I see things.
I agree with you 100%.
But there's actually a pretty famous recent example they could have used! An entire DA race run on prosecuting Bill Cosby.
whyy.org/articles/aft...
The losing "I won't prosecute" candidate later served on Trump's legal team for a while.
