It is this kind of unfair, deceptive paraphrasing and omission of context that is frequently used to create a new political myth. Read in context, the lesson plan is actually just a banal recitation of the need for tolerance.

Nevertheless, the echo chamber, voracious for fresh outrages, swung into action immediately after Sorokin's article was published. Matt Drudge ran a banner headline on the Drudge Report linking to Sorokin's story: "NEA TELLS TEACHERS NOT TO CAST 9/11 BLAME." Then the story was picked up on CNN's "Talkback Live." Newberry, appearing first, stated that the NEA has "more than 100 lesson plans ... center[ed] around patriotism, center[ed] around America's history and how this event fits into those events." He added, "The enemy here is Osama bin Laden. The enemy here is al-Qaida. And there are many plans how America is going to work together to take on that enemy." He also accused Sorokin of writing the story without having seen the site, saying "the site did not even become live until 8 this morning, and those articles were written yesterday."

Nonetheless, Sandy Rios of Concerned Women of America, who followed Newberry on "Talkback," said that, according to the NEA, "our kids are not able to blame al-Qaida or Osama bin Laden until they have had a trial." She then offered this twisted analogy: "We knew on Dec. 7, 1941, that the Japanese were responsible for the bombing of Pearl Harbor. We didn't wait until they went to court and a judge decided. And yet that is what the NEA is suggesting that teachers teach our children."

That night, on Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor," Bob Kuttner of the liberal American Prospect magazine knocked down the story as focusing on "[o]ne of the many hundreds of links" on the NEA site, calling it "the most dishonest piece of journalism I've read in years," "a completely trumped-up hoax of a charge" and a "malicious allegation." Rios, appearing as the other guest with substitute host John Gibson, nonetheless falsely claimed "[t]his is what the NEA says" before reading a quotation from Lippincott and pushing her Pearl Harbor analogy.

She wasn't the only person claiming Lippincott's piece represented the NEA's official position that night, however. On CNN's "Crossfire," co-host Tucker Carlson said, "The National Education Association has released its lesson plan for Sept. 11 suggestions for what teachers should teach their classes on the first anniversary of the tragedy. Among its directives, don't, quote, 'suggest any group is responsible for the attacks.'" And Sean Hannity, co-host of Fox News Channel's "Hannity and Colmes," repeated the same spin in a question to Newberry, who tried ineffectually to counter it.

At this point, myth proponents began to circulate even more unfair paraphrases of the original distortion. On "Talkback Live," Rios alleged that the NEA wants teachers to "talk about all the bad things that Americans have done to contribute to the Sept. 11 attacks." Then, the next day, Sorokin published a follow-up story in the Washington Times similarly claiming that the NEA "cites American intolerance as a reason for the attacks." Neither Rios nor Sorokin provided any evidence to support this claim, which is presumably a twisted paraphrase of another one of Lippincott's tips intended to promote tolerance: a discussion of "historical instances of American intolerance" such as "[i]nternment of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor and the backlash against Arab Americans during the Gulf War." Somehow they twist a suggested lesson that is obviously intended to prevent an overreaction to the Sept. 11 attacks into the nonsensical claim that this means the NEA believes America is somehow responsible for the attacks taking place.

In an accompanying editorial that also ran on Aug. 20, the Washington Times refined the myth even further. "NEA staff have apparently busied themselves this summer preparing lesson plans cautioning teachers not to 'suggest any group is responsible' for the terrorist airliner hijackings," it lied. The Times then pummeled the NEA straw man it created, framing direct quotes from Lippincott as NEA creations with false phrases like "the NEA disgustingly lectures" and "the NEA urges teachers."

On Aug. 20, the Times spin was adopted by the Times of London, which wrote that the NEA "told teachers" and "said" things that Lippincott wrote. On "Crossfire" that night, Carlson called a Lippincott statement "a suggested guideline" from NEA. Co-host James Carville then asked Rios, appearing as a guest, if she had read what Lippincott wrote. She played dumb: "Mr. Brian Lippincott? I know about the curriculum. You mean, what it says in the curriculum?"

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