On Sunday, the New York Times printed an interview with Barbara Boxer that included this passage about her forthcoming novel on Washington politics:

Q: But how can you say that “A Time to Run,” your first novel, represents the world of Washington politics when the Democratic characters are portrayed as saints, the Republicans as snakes?

BOXER: Let the reader judge. I come to the book with a point of view. But my characters, I believe they’re multidimensional.

Q: What about Greg, who becomes an operative for a wealthy Republican businessman and tries to destroy the career of a Democratic congressman who was his friend in college? Do you think Democrats are just more virtuous than Republicans?

BOXER: As individuals? No. But as parties, I think the Democrats have virtuous goals.

Today, a Washington Times article about Boxer’s book draws on the Times interview, but carefully quotes around Boxer’s statement that individual Democrats are no more virtuous than Republicans:

Sen. Barbara Boxer’s debut novel has yet to be published, but it already has created a dark and stormy night for Republicans. They’re mostly villains in “A Time to Run,” a suspense tale penned by the California Democrat.

The New York Times questioned Mrs. Boxer’s portrayal of Republicans as “snakes” and Democrats as “saints” in the book, which chronicles the adventures of a diminutive redhead who assumes her husband’s Senate seat after he is killed, then tries to foil the nomination of a conservative woman to the Supreme Court.

…In an interview with the Times on Sunday, however, Mrs. Boxer acknowledged writing the book “with a point of view,” adding that as a party, the “Democrats have virtuous goals.”

Mrs. Boxer told Publishers Weekly last month that her novel was “definitely a struggle between liberals and conservatives, and knowing that I wrote the book, you can imagine who wins the day.”

(Note: See my Spinsanity column on the NEA/9-11 myth for more on the nation’s most dishonest newspaper.)