Letters to the Editor
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The Word to Emphasize is "Propaganda"
In "The Producers", Mel Brooks epitomizes what propaganda is by having Joseph Goebbels tell Hitler that he just told the people "we invaded England" and that "I told 'em we beat them!", to which Hitler rejoins "That's my Joey, I love my Little Joe!"
Maybe if concepts of "responsibility" and "ethics" don't get through to TIME, TIME's editors and TIME's writers, the idea of abject humiliation and derision might.
Glenn, your invaluable exposition of the fundamental dishonesty of this Klein/TIME hatchet job is, as your work so often is, magnificent and compelling. But as we collectively bemoan the likely absence of anything resembling "alarm" coming from the "mainstream" or the "Beltway" or the "Serious" folk, how about we start using, in bold type, the one word that everybody understands and nobody purports to like: "propaganda." THAT'S WHAT THIS EPISODE EPITOMIZES. THAT'S A MONIKER THAT NOT EVEN TIME MAGAZINE SAFELY CAN IGNORE. Isn't it? How can an author, confronted with the abject falsity of the cornerstone of his political tome, respond that he has neither the expertise nor the time to understand what he has written (and an editor subsequently back him) without the piece being recognized as pure, unadulterated and intentional propaganda? Who could do that? It cries out to be the butt of Mel Brooks' jokes, not just (though, certainly, also) anger and scorn.