Fumento and the $10,000 golf round

Good old Mike Fumento has another go at Javers:

In the one instance we know of, the DC firm Patton Boggs and others invited Javers to play on the highly exclusive Bretton Woods golf course. I would guess that the value of this gift would be in excess of $10,000. This could be considered unsavory in itself, but is all the more so in that Javers has made himself Witch Hunter General in digging up dirt (or inventing it, when "necessary") on conservative writers to strip away their jobs, their columns, or at the very least inhibit their think tank employers from accepting corporate support.

There are a few comments I could make here, like that Javers didn't invent anything, or that Patton Boggs didn't invite Javers to play golf or give him a gift, but the question that popped into my mind was: Did Fumento blow the $60,000 he got from Monsanto on six rounds of golf?

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Notice the use of the word guess to give implausible deniability. At this point Fumento has come very close to committing slander. OTOH, since the facts upon which Javers went after Fumento are true, Javers did not

The firm in question "invited Javers to play": Fumento very carefully does not say that Javers accepted the gift, while managing to leave the impression that he did. If Tim is right and the invitation was never even extended, that's a direct lie but probably below the threshold at which it's worth pursuing legal action.

Last time I checked being invited to play in a single tournament (where Patton Boggs was only one of a number of sponsors) wasn't a "gift" worth $10,000.

Big Hitters Golf Classic Spring 2002

If these people were ever in the presence of a truth they'd burst into flames.

This is an obvious smear campaign against Eamon Javers, with no substance or even vaguely intelligent thought, and I don't like it.