“Welcome Mr. Gandhi” —Winston Churchill
This article first appeared in The Weekly Standard scrapbook for 21 July 2014.
Every time you realize how badly the media mangles something you know about, you wonder how well they are reporting everything else.
The announcement that a statue of Gandhi would be placed in Parliament Square near that of Winston Churchill unleashed a barrage of ignorance. Would Churchill wish to share space with his “onetime nemesis”?
The Associated Press quoted Churchill’s famous “half-naked fakir” crack (inaccurately), and said he called Gandhi a “middling lawyer.” (Churchill’s term was “Middle Temple lawyer,” something else entirely.)
The Wall Street Journal worried that Parliament Square also includes a statue of Jan Smuts, “a prime minister of South Africa in the early 20th century who favored segregation.”
Dear oh dear.…
