Krauthammer protests too much in denying email account of local speech

Having twice previewed conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer’s appearance this summer at the Center of the American Experiment in Minneapolis, we would be remiss not to note an ensuing internet kerfuffle concerning the event. It seems an account of his speech went viral via email, leading Krauthammer to issue a statement disputing its authenticity. But it wasn’t enough for Krauthammer to say he didn’t say what the email said he had said. He had to say why he couldn’t have said it. And that’s where Krauthammer gets himself into trouble.

Sometime after the Center’s annual dinner on June 1, the Center posted this statement on its website:

Statement from Dr. Charles Krauthammer
about his American Experiment Annual Dinner Remarks

A number of people have asked about the availability of an audio recording or transcript of Charles Krauthammer’s brilliant remarks at American Experiment’s 2009 Annual Dinner on June 1. We’re sorry, but Dr. Krauthammer has informed us that he does not disseminate comments made at private events. He also has advised us that a summary of his speech on the Internet is “neither accurate nor authoritative.” His full statement follows. The Center regrets any disappointment or confusion.

The Center then gives Krauthammer space to refute the email account of his speech, replete with links to past columns:

This account is neither accurate nor authoritative. My views on Obama are well known. I’ve explained them in a series of five columns. (See below.)

This email is somebody putting his own ideological stamp and spin on my views.

One giveaway of the superimposition of someone else’s views on mine is the rather amusing use of phrases that I never use. To take just a few examples randomly: “God forbid,” “far left secular progressive,” “this is the first president ever who has chastised our allies and appeased our enemies!” “no country had ever spent themselves into prosperity,” and, the real doozy, “states rights.”

My views are clearly spelled out in that series of columns and subsequent writings. Anyone who wants to know my views should consult those and not this email.

Charles Krauthammer

Obama: The Grand Strategy – April 24, 2009

The Sting, In Four Parts – April 17, 2009

Obama’s Ultimate Agenda – April 3, 2009

The Great Non Sequitur – March 6, 2009

The Obamaist Manifesto – February 27, 2009

The email in question begins this way:

A friend went to hear Charles Krauthammer. He listened with 25 others in a closed room. What he says here, is NOT 2nd-hand but 1st. You would do well to read and pass this along to EVERYBODY that loves his country. …

The friend then praises Krauthammer to high heaven before offering a “summary of his comments”:

Last Monday was a profound evening, hearing Dr. Charles Krauthammer speak to the Center for the American Experiment. He is brilliant intellectual [sic], reasoned & articulate. …

The internet-rumor debunkers at Snopes.com present the email message in full and categorize it as a “mixture” of fact and fiction. They also present Krauthammer’s denial at more or less face value.

A similar site, truthorfiction.com, declares a slightly different version of the email to be “fiction.”

But a little more rigorous checking would have raised doubts about the very doubts Krauthammer raised in his statement.

Take the first of the “phrases that I never use” that Krauthammer claims are “giveaways” to the email’s inauthenticity, “God forbid.”

In fact, he has used the phrase “God forbid” at least two of his columns:

Just leave Christmas alone – December 17, 2004:

Some Americans get angry at parents who want to ban carols because they tremble that their kids might feel “different” and “uncomfortable” should they, God forbid, hear Christian music sung at their school. I feel pity. What kind of fragile religious identity have they bequeathed their children that it should be threatened by exposure to carols?

An Exercise in Religious Intoleration – January 19, 2001

“Christian Right” is a double negative in the liberal lexicon. It is meant to make decent Americans cringe at the thought of some religious wing nut enforcing the laws. Torquemada at Agriculture perhaps. But not Justice, God forbid. To the anti-Ashcroft coalition, the Christian right — numbering at least 30 million, by the way — is some kind of weird fringe group to whom bones are thrown by otherwise responsible Republicans to induce them to return to their caves.

It would be worth checking out the other “giveaway” phrases sometime, but that kind of piling on might be unseemly when the country is mourning the death of his fellow conservative columnist Robert Novak.

Still, Krauthammer’s disavowal — with its irresistible, Gary Hart–style double-dare to check his back catalog of columns — creates a classic closed room mystery: Did someone among the 25 people assembled (using the email’s count, with some paying as much as $25,000 for the privilege) intentionally misconstrue what Krauthammer  said? Or, God forbid, do the holes in his statement suggest he’s the liar?