Conservatives can stop biting their tongues after an obituary for George Soros that briefly appeared Thursday on the website of London-based news agency Reuters was confirmed to have been published in error. The obituary was removed shortly after it was noticed by countless numbers of visitors. In short, Soros is still alive and kicking.
It is common practice for news organizations to write draft obituaries of high profile figures and though it is not common for those to be published prematurely, it does happen. In the current age of high-speed social media, by the time the mistake was noticed, the genie had already leapt from the bottle and made several Superman-esque laps around the globe.
When Soros final moments do come, however, how does the latest iteration of Reuters obit want the world to remember him? As a predatory and successful philanthropist who railed against the very free markets he had used to amass his own wealth, and who made as many friends as enemies. Here is an excerpt from the published draft:
George Soros, who died XXX at age XXX, was a predatory and hugely successful financier and investor, who argued paradoxically for years against the same sort of free-wheeling capitalism that made him billions. …
He was known as “the man who broke the Bank of England” for selling short the British pound in 1992 and helping force the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, which devalued the pound and earned Soros more than $1 billion.
And his Soros Fund Management was widely blamed for helping trigger the Asian financial crisis of 1997, by selling short the Thai baht and Malaysian ringgit.
Despite the hasty trigger finger of Reuters staff, the honesty of the article could have restored some faith in journalism, though knowledge of his rightful place in history as a robber baron who camouflaged his activities might crush the rank and file in the subversive army of left-wing activists Soros has played sugar daddy to in recent years through MoveOn.org and the Occupy Wall Street movement.
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