The Big Lie Continues

"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. Even worse, the essay in question, published by the National Association of School Psychologists on Sept. 15, 2001, was meant to preach tolerance toward Arab and Muslim Americans -- not al-Qaida. And Lippincott, contrary to what has been widely reported, did not even write it. Yet the myth still continues to spread in Op-Ed columns, on TV and even in a comic strip."