Jim Hoft is high on the short list of laziest hacks “working” today in the conservative blogosphere. So it was with a mix of bemusement and frustration that I read his latest missive, in which he approvingly quotes Palin's attacks on the media under the headline "Sarah Palin to Lamestream Media: Research Is Your Best Friend - Try It Sometime." For the sake of keeping this under 15,000 words, let's leave aside the absurdity of factually-challenged Palin lecturing anyone on dishonest attacks and just focus on Hoft.
Hoft quotes Palin's attacks on the media, and then closes with this pronouncement:
Sarah Palin gets it. It's time to put the media on notice. No longer will their dishonest reports go unchallenged. Today there is a new - true media that includes conservative talk radio, conservative blogs and websites, FOX News and conservative think tanks. Their Pravda-like reporting will be challenged.
Let's have a look at this “new - true media,” as exemplified by Jim Hoft, aka Gateway Pundit.
This weekend, Hoft reprinted a press release from a “scam artist” with no scientific credentials in order to fear monger about “global cooling.” There are two options for how this happened: Either Hoft didn't take two minutes to run a quick search on the press release that landed in his inbox before uncritically promoting it, or he ran the search, found all of the relevant debunkings, and decided to run the “story” anyway. Either way, Jim Hoft should not be lecturing the media about “dishonest reports” and “research.”
On Friday, Hoft continued his long history of smearing the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), by manufacturing the falsehood that they were holding “secret gay sex classes.” They weren't.
On Thursday, Hoft breathlessly reported that “all Americans” will have to pay a 3.8 percent tax “when they sell their home.” Yet again, Hoft was just uncritically reprinting something he felt reflected poorly on Democrats - in this case a March op-ed in the Spokesman Review. FactCheck.org explained that the tax only applies to a “tiny percentage of home sellers,” not “all Americans” as Hoft claimed.
And that's just what he's done past five days. Dig back a little further and it becomes clear that Hoft has absolutely no idea what “research” and “journalism” actually entail. Indeed, if there's a baseless smear of Democrats or their policies, you can usually find Jim Hoft pushing it unquestioningly.
“Lie of the year” death panels? Hoft said “Sarah was right” just three weeks ago. The completely baseless and utterly false claim that Faisal Shahzad was a “registered Democrat”? Hoft stated it as fact. The completely debunked Prowler “scoop” that the HHS “hid” a “damning health care report”? Hoft posted about it at both his own blog and at Breitbart's BigGovernment.com. Dick Morris' laughably false accusation about Janet Reno blackmailing Bill Clinton over Waco in order to stay on as attorney general? Hoft promoted it under the headline “Dick Morris Bombshell.” The comically insane idea - debunked by Comedy Central - that the nuclear summit logo was mimicking an Islamic crest? Hoft posted it under the headline “That's Weird?..Obama's Nuclear Summit Logo Is an Islamic Crest.” The smear that Sarkozy called Obama “insane” that Fox and numerous conservative blogs borrowed from a ragingly anti-Semitic website? Hoft forwarded it as a “recent report supposedly circulating the Kremlin.”
Those examples are from just the last month and a half. Sadly, despite Hoft's uncanny ability to write what should be career-endingly embarrassing posts on an almost daily basis, his “reporting” is frequently picked up by other conservative blogs and Fox News.
Behold, your “new -- true media.”