Who among us doesn't love fake quotes?

One might think that if your job description contains the words "media critic," then your columns within said brief should be more than just cut-and-paste jobs from other people's columns, devoid of any analysis. But not if you are Washington Post "media critic" Howard Kurtz. With the window closing for baseball metaphors in 2004, let's try and squeeze one more in: he's offered a 40 mile an hour fastball straight down the middle -- but he thinks he has a time out and so takes a called strike. And so it is with this extract:

[Kurtz cutting and pasting] New York Daily News columnist Michael Goodwin has had enough of '04:

"I'm sick of it. Sick of Bush and Kerry. Sick of their wives. Sick of Cheney and Edwards. And their wives. I'm sick of Kerry pretending to be a normal guy. ... Saying, 'Who among us doesn't like NASCAR?' to get the racing vote."

Except that Kerry never said that. This was a fake quote, cooked up by Maureen Dowd and Sheryl Gay Stolberg at the "liberal" New York Times. The Daily Howler from 4 weeks ago has all the details -- yet lazy columnists are still peddling the quote and "media critics" aren't calling them on it.

Incidentally, this is the same "liberal" New York Times whose adherence to objectivity in Friday's print edition requires side-by-side photos of Kerry and Bush rallies, shot at different angles and distances, to make it look like they are drawing similar crowds.