Sunday, December 17, 2006

The Susan Seaforth Hayes of independent media

The Susan Seaforth Hayes of independent media somehow landed a fellowship despite some of the shoddiest work ever produced. For some reason, though he's an editor of another magazine, The Nation has decided he's just the guy for them and you can't seem to escape him these days.




Ava and C.I. put you wise to Susan Seaforth Hayes after his laughable claimed that Moronic Mars was all about the class struggle. As they responded: "Yes, it is -- if you believe that the class war will be costumed by Nordstrom Brass Plum and Neiman Marcus."




And long before Little Lee Lee self-imploded, Jess and C.I. had noted exactly why that New Republic(an) writer didn't belong in the pages of The Nation.




Obviously, some people never learn. So the Susan Seaforth Hayes is this year's attempt at Little Lee Lee and Nation readers should be screaming their heads off.




We've never read a piece of his work that could be validated as any thing other than a 'feelings check.' Facts always seem just past the river for Susan Seaforth Hayes.




So much so, that The Nation had to run this correction on page 28 of their December 18, 2006 issue:








If you have trouble reading the image, CAFTA passed by two votes while Susan Seaforth Hayes claimed it passed by one. That's not even the tip of the iceberg for the hideous article in question. And while the Dr. Seus like style of the correction may suggest he needs remedial help, it also makes far too light of his error (and unnoted STILL errors).




As we noted two Sunday's back -- Susan Seaforth Hayes also quotes John Kerry's DNC convention speech -- only the quote doesn't appear in the DNC convention speech. That's a problem and Susan Seaforth Hayes usually has several 'problems' in every piece he writes. That's fine when he writes for the piece of crap that nobody reads, but when he gets play in The Nation, someone should be fact checking. Magazines are supposed to do that and, goodness knows, he's not going to do it himself.





Why the magazine insists upon publishing people (in print) with other outlets is beyond us but if they want to continue to do so, they should grasp that there's a reason no one's reading them at their permanent homes. They also need to take their fact checking and corrections a lot more seriously.




The only correction they've run to Susan Seaforth Hayes' factually challenged article appears in print. It's not been ammended to the article itself nor has the article been corrected to fix the mistake.




No one's twisted their arms and forced them to print the Little Lee-Lees or Susans, they've done that by their own choice. Having made that decision, they need to grasp that writers from outside the magazine often need serious oversight -- Puffy fellow or not.
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