Is Michelle Malkin really the best person to be demanding retractions?
November 25, 2009 8:45 am ET by Eric Boehlert
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.
....and liberals. Honestly, I wouldn't mind conservative positions nearly as much if they would just fess up and be honest. The lies are bad enough, but the constant righteous indignation when their lies are questioned and the "moral superiority" of their dishonest positions is what gets me. I have always had a beef against those icky sweet, snooty, condescending "Church Ladies" but when you find out that she used to be the wildest, foulest,trashiest thing to chuch her panties in six counties...........I just gag, that is, after I stop laughing so hard that it made me gag. Malicious Malkintent is a pit viper, everything she spits on is poisoned and I'm not so sure she doesn't have a rubber bustier and a whip under the bed. (Pity her poor husband.)
Either that, or she'll find another handicapped kid to sic her winged-monkey followers on.
Which do you think is more likely?
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http://mediamatters.org/corrections
No one ever told anyone here posting such wild speculation as this blaming it on Beck and Fox News to temper their rhetoric. It was just accepted. It was like that on every liberal blog. It was amazing to see people actually rooting for this to be a murder and for Beck, Boortz and Bachmann to get the blame so that the left could have a field day painting conservatives as redneck eliminationists.
Dave Weigel even headlined an article of is yesterday saying Michelle Bachmann caught a break. How, exactly, did she catch a break? Liberal bloggers will all claim innocence in this, that they always started their posts with 'Not all the facts are in yet and it's not wise to jump to conclusions....', but they know they way they led their readers that they would do the jumping to conclusions for them. Just pathetic.
but be careful when calling someone pathetic given the fact that someone like lets say Beck.....who has stoked fear about the government coming to take your guns caused a watcher of his to go a shoot up a class of legal immigrants learning english.....beck still hasn't owned up to the moral responsibility of that yet.
bachmann has used such incendiary words and phrases making it sound like our current administration and government are the enemy....and that kind of imagery is acceptable to you?
those two chuckleheads have been the point people on stoking anti administration fears along with limbaugh and WND and Malkin and every other neo con trying to make our president seem as illegitimate for no reason other than they are upset that they got beat.
those you support and believe in were thrown out of power so suck it up and deal with it.
That's not hysteria.
And for everyone's info, here's the MMFA posting where he finds it - and guess what? It's where Roger Hedgecock went off half-cocked on the drug dealer and open borders angle - because don't you know, drug dealers are all liberal, because liberals want to decriminalize drugs. Of course, that linkage doesn't stand up to scrutiny, because drug dealers make profits off an illegal drug because there's profit in that illegality and if drugs are made legal the smalltime guys won't make that profit! And open borders? I swear, you guys don't have any standing to attack posters on sites like this saying things like "might" with the rightwing pundits from your side of the aisle!
...in the article right up there.
Reading. FUN.
where is your retractions for plugging for guys who espouse family values and are found cheating on their wives?
how about a retraction for supporting people spreading lies about terrorisim and the need for torture and how it has made us safe and that we needed to go to iraq for non existant wmd's?
you have some nerve calling for boehlert to retract when everyone got the story wrong. and your still plugging for the most criminal and corrupt presidency in history.
And there are a lot of people here who jumped the gun on this incident.
The KSP said he was asking around about the anti-government sentiment in the area beforehand, so it's apparent now that Sparkman was actually relying on your hysterical reactions so his son would get paid out on the insurance policy if it had been ruled a suicide.
I would hope that are calling the Ft. Hood tragedy a terrorist act will keep that in mind.
And one sadness in this is that, as far as I know, the idea of 'insurance companies not paying off on suicides' is a myth, one that may have been true, but now is just a handy plot device for detective stories. IANAL, but I think that while there is a required waiting period -- to avoid someone buying a policy and killing himself the next day -- after that, suicide is treated like any other death.
Sparkman "told a credible witness that he planned to commit suicide and provided details on how and when."
Authorities wouldn't say who Sparkman told of his plan, but said Sparkman talked about it a week before his suicide and the person did not take him seriously. He told the person he believed his lymphoma, which he had previously been treated for, had recurred, police said.
Sparkman also had recently taken out two accidental life insurance policies totaling $600,000 that would not pay out for suicide, authorities said. One policy was taken out in late 2008; the other in May.
Funny how as mentally unstable as he must have been, he knew he had all kinds of dupes as allies in the nutroots and on the MSNBC nightly opinion shows. Even Congress, too.
Which reminds me, I wonder if Ed Schultz will feature himself on tonight's edition of 'Psycho Talk' for the way he tried to hype this incident as right-wing Eliminationism.