UPDATED: The Jennings smear = the latest right-wing "scandal" to flop in the mainstream
December 18, 2009 9:20 am ET by Eric Boehlert
This hopeless campaign really is shaping up to be one the truly epic fails in the history of political blogging. I'm hard-pressed to think an instance in which such a large portion of the supposed A-list blogosphere went so bat-shit crazy for a story for so long, posting so many name-calling rants, and yet had so little to show for it. To say that it's crickets out there in the real world re: the Jennings story would be an exaggeration.
But the most amusing part is that the leaders of this misguided pack (Cough! Cough! Andrew Breitbart, Gateway Pundit) show no signs of letting up on the gas. They're oblivious to the sad spectacle they've created and don't realize that people are literally laughing at them. Instead, they think they're rounding third and heading for home. And they've convinced themselves that if they post just one more nasty, impossible-to-follow, guilt-by-association diatribe, than all the pieces of their gay-baiting hate campaign will magically come together and Kevin Jennings will finally be driven from Washington, D.C., preferably by a pitchfork-waving mob.
If you say so guys. Although honestly, I'm not ruling out a Gateway Pundit post next March or April ("Fistgate LXXVII"?), where he assures readers he's just about to bust this story wide open.
But for the record, it's now been two weeks of obsessive updates and relentless "fisting" headlines (read Tbogg's side-splitting take on Gateway Pundit's gay sex obsession), and nobody outside the right-wing world cares. (As for Media Matters, as long as the right-wing keeps posting the misleading Jennings attacks, we'll keep debunking them.)
One week ago I reported that at the time not one serious news organization had picked up the Jennings story. Which means not one reporter, editor or producer looked at the hysteria that was posted online about Jennings and thought, hey, that's a news story. Instead, everyone ignored it. (Frankly, I think most journalists sprinted away from it.) Why? Because the stuff was patently bogus, not to mention relentlessly creepy. Well, here we are after week two and let's go to totem board, courtesy of Nexis.
Number of serious news orgs that have reported on the Jennings 'scandal': 0.
Number of right-wing posts about the Jennings 'scandal': Dude, I've completely lost count.
As I noted last week:
The endless stream of hollow allegations the right-wing traffics in has now largely become background noise, albeit unpleasant and unwanted noise. They represent a cacophony of endless allegations that virtually never pan out. So can you blame journalists for simply tuning it out?
And therein lies the silver lining. The more right-wing bloggers discredit themselves with Jennings-like witch hunts, the less likely it is journalists will take them seriously.
The strategy these guys use is to throw these stories out there until something sticks.
They have no shame and there's no penalty for failure.
This is exactly how they treated Clinton, rumor after rumor until finally the blue dress showed up.
I got a stop using profanity message, and lost everything I had typed. So, I went back and typed it again, and made sure that nothing I wrote was offensive or even questionable. I copied what I wrote first before I hit 'save', and got the same message from the profanity filter. Turned out that it was a bad word in the snippet I had copied from the article!
But this is what the New 'merkin Taliban would like to have, a gay-free society. They will never stop. I say that this is less about journalism (obviously) than it is religious fervor. Think "Jesus Camp" with a laptop.
The reason is because this is a non-issue. The conference served a purpose, but it was definitely not for everybody, but for those it was intended for, it obviously was satisfactory. Will I understand it? No, but I attempt. The far right had attended the conference years ago with preconceived notion and now the new far right picked up on an aging story and decided to run with it... maybe the "liberal" media should start running more Larry Craig or Mark Foley stories, because they truly threaten the American way of life. If you notice, the right is quiet about their indiscretions.
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The Midnight Review
But the most amusing part is that the leaders of this misguided pack (Cough! Cough! RightON, Weaselly, ProudConservative, others too) show no signs of letting up on the gas. They're oblivious to the sad spectacle they've created and don't realize that people are literally laughing at them. Instead, they think they're rounding third and heading for home. And they've convinced themselves that if they post just one more nasty, impossible-to-follow, guilt-by-association diatribe, than all the pieces of their hate campaign will magically come together and MMFA will finally be driven from Washington, D.C., preferably by a pitchfork-waving mob.
And therein lies the silver lining. The more right-wing nuts discredit themselves with fact-challenged MMFA witch hunts, the less likely it is other posters here will take them seriously.
That is definitively false. There isn't even a sliver of truth in that statement. Quite unusual for MMFA.
Twenty years from now when the republican (or tea party or whatever it becomes) base has died off and the country is populated exclusively with people who have been exposed to the outside world and are therefore liberal, the entire news media will still hang on every word from conservative bloggers/pundits.
The media's eyes are glued on Jennings, and they'll run thousands of stories on him if anything slightly real pops up, begging forgiveness along the way.