Is Michelle Malkin really the best person to be demanding retractions?

Because it's not like Malkin has any kind of track record herself when it comes to owning up to the many, many fact-free (and often mean-spirited) conspiracies that she's pushed as fact. And she has even less experience apologizing for said dead-enders. So I must say it seems a bit odd that Malkin now rushes to the front of the line, waving her hands and yelling about how anybody on the left who speculated that right-wing activists had anything to do with the death the Kentucky census worker needs to set the record straight. (Police now say the death was a suicide, staged to look like a murder.)

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for holding people accountable, and the blogosphere only functions properly when bloggers have to answer for their work. But the sad truth is, over on the far-right side of the Internet, any notion of accountability seems to have been tossed out the window. It is utterly ignored. Like, as a rule.

For example, just last week I highlighted how popular right-wing blogger Gateway Pundit manufactured an Obama quote which the blogger then used to mock the president. After I, and scores of his commenters, politely pointed out that Gateway Pundit had, y'know, manufactured a quote, what was the blogger's response? Nothing. The post wasn't updated, the fake quote wasn't taken down, and of course no apology was offered up.

Accountability, at least within the right-wing blogosphere, is for suckers. So again, it's a bit odd for Malkin to come running out onto her porch and start demanding that any liberal bloggers who might have gotten the Kentucky story wrong, or even raised questions about the case, start writing up their corrections.

Hey I know, maybe as a sign of good will, and an indication that she really takes accountability seriously, Malkin will finally come clean about the bogus tale she eagerly spread in September about how a staggering 2 million anti-Obama protesters had gathered in Washington, D.C..

Because oops, she was only off by 1.9 million.

UPDATED: The Brad Blog, a target of Malkin's ticket-writing campaign, explains why he's not going to honor her request:

We're more than happy, even eager, to offer corrections and, as needed (and it's only been needed once) retractions to anything that we get wrong here. While we appreciate Malkin's desperation to find someone out there who screws up so spectacularly as she does on such a regular basis


such hilarious failures have damned near become her meat and potatoes at this point

this story hardly appears to be the one on which she should, pardon the tasteless pun, hang her hate hat.