By Brian Carnell

Tuesday, January 22, 2002

What the hell is going on at The Nation? The magazine published, then modified, then finally removed from its site an absurd article by Matt Bivens trying to link George W. Bush to Enron via Bush's failed ventures into baseball. The only problem with the article was that Bivens comes across as perhaps the only person in America dumber than the president.

Originally published on January 17, 2002, the article began,

When George W. Bush co-owned the Houston Astros and construction began on a new stadium, Kenneth Lay agreed to spend $100 million over thirty years for rights to name the park after Enron.

The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto pointed out that Bush was a part owner of the Texas Rangers, not the Houston Astros. Someone at The Nation dutifully modified the lead of Bivens article to read,

When George W. Bush co-owned the Texas Rangers and construction began on a new stadium, Kenneth Lay agreed to spend $100 million over thirty years for rights to name the park after Enron.

The only problem with this, of course, is that it is the Astros, not the Rangers, that play at Enron Field. The Rangers play at the Ballpark in Arlington. Taranto suggests that an accurate lead would have looked like this,

A year after George W. Bush sold his interest in the Texas Rangers, construction began on a new stadium for the Houston Astros, and Kenneth Lay agreed to spend $100 million over thirty years for rights to name the latter team's park after Enron.

Sources:

The Enron Box. The Nation, Mike Bivens, January 17, 2002. (The Nation has removed this article from its web site, but here's a screenshot from their search engine showing the article).

Best of the Web. James Taranto, OpinionJournal.Com, January 21, 2002.

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