Wingnut hysteria baseless, boy do they look stupid

Glen Greenwald is on the case, as usual. I just clicked on some of his ads in gratitude for the public service he performs. A quick summary: right-wing blowhards like Michelle “American concentration camps during WWII were a good idea” Malkin, RedState, and others spent the weekend accusing the New York Times of helping Al Qaeda kill Donald Rumsfeld, because of a puff piece in the travel section about Rumsfeld’s vacation home. Because there were some pictures published, the wingnuts think this is part of a left-wing treasonous plot. (Sullivan gives one of these acccusers his Malkin Award nomination for intemperate right-wing rhetoric.) Well, it turns out the photographer got permission from Rumsfeld himself to take the photographs. And various right wing news outlets had published the same information already. I bet it took Glen Greenwald all of 20 minutes to call the photographer and do a Google search to find this out. But that’s too much to ask of a mob of right-wing pundits on a blood hunt.

Readers, keep in mind that these are not fringe wingnut bloggers slinging these accusations. They have completely crackpot fringe thinking, but they are in the mainstream of conservative punditry these days. Greenwald’s closing paragraph:

Howard Kurtz puts Hinderaker on CNN virtually every weekend. Malkin and Horowitz are treated like respectable pundits on Fox and other stations. And yet their standards for what they assert are no different than Star Magazine or the lowest, bottom-feeding liars who literally invent facts at will. They spent the whole weekend trying to inflame hatred against the NYT by telling their readers that the NYT article deliberately endangered Don Rumsfeld's security in order to retaliate against him - even though that could not possibly have been true based on known facts, and even though Don Rumsfeld himself authorized the use of those photographs. What possible defense is there for this behavior, and what rational person would consider Malkin, Hinderaker, Horowitz, Red State -- all of them -- even the slightest bit credible in the future?

These people are given credibility by the mass media all the time. Read that Tom Tomorrow cartoon I linked to yesterday. Then keep in mind what Atrios said: “…though sadly reality is fast outpacing his ability to do satire.” (You can also read Atrios’ take on the Greenwald post I’m discussing.) Things are broken, folks. I only hope that now that the MSM (main stream media) is being attacked so openly, they’ll realize that their strategy of giving a platform to hatred in order to boost ratings (I’m assuming that’s why they do it) has a cost, and one that will be paid by them.

And to think they feel threatened by Daily Kos. If CNN doesn’t wake up soon, I’m going to have to use the nuclear option of blogofascism: I’ll start calling them wankers.