NYT Op-Ed Writer Perlstein Botches Reagan's Birth Month

In a May 26 New York Times op-ed piece entitled “America's Forgotten Liberal” (HT Jim Taranto at the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web), Rick Perlstein opened by telling readers that “January was the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth.”

Oops. Ronald Wilson Reagan was born on February 6, 1911.

Here's a graphic capture of Perlstein's first two paragraphs:

Maybe the problem is that Perlstein was so excited when he found out that Reagan's 100th birth anniversary was coming up that he started celebrating a week or so early.

Paragraph 2 captured above accurately previews how the rest of the op-ed by the author of “Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America” is pathetically weak “what if” dreck over which the further use of bandwidth is not warranted.

Perlstein's only other tagged appearance at NewsBusters came courtesy of Ken Shepherd, who documented the writer's opinion that “Obama Needs to Be as Stubborn as Reagan Was.”

One thing for sure: Perlstein, and apparently the fact-checkers at the Times, are about as good with dates as Barack Obama.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.