And if someone characterized it that way, I think it would be the height of absurdity to harshly attack their reputation for that characterization.

Please. The near-height of absurdity is to accuse someone else of lying because they flatly refuse to answer a question, you convince yourself you know the answer anyway, and the answer you convinced yourself of turns out to be wrong. The absolute height is to say that person was “caught” in a lie the next day when he tells you your inference was wrong after being confronted with … nothing. Allah himself didn’t reach these heights, but his strained interpretation of the interview, coupled with a lack of any clarifying or corrective updates, went a long way toward helping a lot of readers make this leap.

But See-Dubya’s right, this particular argument has gone way too long, and as you’ve already noted, this entry isn’t about Allah anyway. Nor was my other Hot Air post, for that matter.

I thought Sabato didn’t hear anything but tried hard to make it sound as though he did and that it wasn’t such a huge leap to believe he was implying that he did, but it was a leap I didn’t make. However, again, I obviously didn’t consider it a big enough deal to say anything, and as I’ve stated I thought Xrlq was too hard on Allah for it. This new post is more rational, methinks.

Before that person can finish or even drop so much as a hint what was coming after that “but,” you rudely cut him off. Later in the conversation you ask:

Were you there for X?

To which he responds:

That’s for me to know, and for you to find out.

Does that read to you as an implication that he was there for X?

Try that on the same 3 out of 3 people.

So in one place he implies he was there. In another place he says he knows it’s true. In another place he refuses to say whether he heard it himself.

Sounds to me like a guy who refuses to say how he knows — but it sure sounds like he heard it himself.

This is like the Kerry comment. It’s ambiguous and clearly open to the interpretation that Malkin put on it.

Again, only if yanked out of context. In context, it’s clear what both the question and the answer were about:

APPARENTLY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT: “I want to help, but I don’t have papers.”

BUSBY: “Everybody can help, yeah, absolutely, you can all help. You don’t need papers for voting, you don’t need to be a registered voter to help.”

Read in context, it’s neither ambiguous nor open to multiple interpretations. The guy asked a question about whether or not he could help despite not having papers. He didn’t ask whether he could vote or not. One reading of her response makes sense as an answer; the other just happened to be the only one either Malkin or Powerline, whom you cited at the time, either could or would see. Powerline at least had the decency to provide the full context so their readers could see what their authors did not. Malkin didn’t even do that:

Francine Busby, the Democratic candidate in Tuesday’s CA-50 special election has been caught on tape telling a Spanish-speaking audience “You don’t need papers for voting.”

Responding to a question from a translator about how to help her campaign, Francine Busby also told non-English-speaking volunteers that they don’t need to be registered voters to help the campaign.

That isn’t “the interpretation that Malkin put on” the quote. It was false quotation, complete with quotation marks and a period where the middle of the sentence should be.

Someone says to you:

I’m saying only about x. I’m not saying about y. I wasn’t there for y. But…

Before that person can finish or even drop so much as a hint what was coming after that “but,” you rudely cut him off. Later in the conversation you ask:

Were you there for X?

To which he responds:

That’s for me to know, and for you to find out.

Does that read to you as an implication that he was there for X?

Try that on the same 3 out of 3 people.

Anyway, I am posing the abstract question to anyone who will listen, and everyone hears an implication.

Someone says to you:

I’m saying only about x. I’m not saying about y. I wasn’t there for y.

Does that read to you as an implication that they were there for x?

So far, 3 of 3 people have said yes.