I haven’t emailed Dennis Prager to inform him as to just how badly he screwed the pooch in his recent article on Muslims taking the Congressional oath on a Koran instead of a Bible – when apparently the official Congressional oath is not taken on any book at all. The reason I haven’t emailed him is because so many other bloggers have already pointed this stuff out, that between others emailing and the calls he has got to be getting on his radio talk show, I simply can’t imagine he hasn’t been made aware of his gaffes already. Assuming he has been, the real test of whether he truly is an idiotarian or just a reasonable guy who managed to screw up really, really badly on one isolated occasion is how he handles the correction. As a journalist, he has a number of possible approaches at his disposal:

1. L.A. Times correction: stonewall for three months, telling readers and callers your staff is looking into the allegations, and finally come back with a terse statement to the effect that the original article was accurate.
2. Radley Balko correction: ignore all emails and calls about the inaccuracies in the article for a year, or until the bad publicity becomes overwhelming, whichever comes later. Then issue a brief correction acknowledging that the phrase “What Ellison and his Muslim and leftist supporters are saying…” was misleading, as not all of Ellison’s supporters are leftists. Follow up that technicality-correction with a reminder that the question of whether Ellison’s supporters are or aren’t leftists doesn’t really affect the thrust of your article, and end with smug remark about what a great guy you are for correcting your mistakes.
3. Andrew Sullivan correction: Correct nothing, just rant and rave about all the “hate mail” yo’ure getting from those mean and nasty liberalists, anti-Americanists and assorted leftist-ists.
4. Glenn Greenwald correction: Same as the Sully, but litter your rants with irrelevant links. Don’t worry where they lead, if anywhere. No one will follow them anyway; they’re just there as a prop to make it look as though you’ve researched the matter thoroughly.
5. New York Times correction: don’t admit to any mistakes yourself, but do hire an “ombudsman” to defend you for months while pretending to act neutrally, then finally admit that you were wrong, and that he was wrong to defend you, but felt the need to do so because other people (leftists, mostly) have been so mean to you before.
6. Molly Ivins correction (almost): admit in your next column that the last one was garbage.

I trust Prager will choose the appropriate option.

UPDATE: Then again, there’s always the CAIR correction, which involves just keeping quiet for a day or two until someone else steals the spotlight by making an even bigger ass of himself than you did.

UPDATE x2: Apparently, I was a bit too optimistic in my original assessment.