So is this going to become a running thing, where conservative blogger Patterico makes lame attempts at fact-checking my work and then I have to embarrass him on this blog?

So be it.

No doubt still stinging from the “hit-and'-run” mess earlier this week, Patterico claims I had it all wrong when I recently blogged that the New York Times has erroneously reported that, during his undercover ACORN sting, James O'Keefe entered the offices dressed as a pimp. It's erroneous because according to a recent independent investigation, that's just not true; a fact blogger Brad Friedman has recently been highlighting.

O'Keefe did not go inside the ACORN offices dressed as a pimp. The outlandish pimp costume was later used as a propaganda tool and was used to suggest he'd entered ACORN offices looking like a pimp, and OMG how dumb can those ACORN workers be?! But there's no evidence he ever did. (Instead, O'Keefe was dressed like a college student.)

Yet, as I noted, the Times has made the dressed-like-a-pimp-inside-ACORN-offices claim. Now Patterico says I got it wrong and that the newspaper has never claimed that O'Keefe was dressed that way when he made his undercover tapes. Patterico insists the Times simply described O'Keefe as playing the part of the pimp, or posing, and not actually dressed that way.

Scolds the clueless Patterico [emphasis original]:

Uh, no, dopey. The Times hasn't. Nor have the other outlets cited by [Brad] Friedman. These outlets have made the “O'Keefe posed as a pimp” claim. And that claim is true, because if you have seen the tapes, that's exactly what O'Keefe did.

K. Ready for the embarrassing part where I quote the New York Times claiming O'Keefe was dressed as a pimp visiting ACORN offices?

Behold:

The undercover videos showed a scantily dressed young woman, Hannah Giles, posing as a prostitute, while a young man, James O'Keefe, played her pimp. They visited Acorn offices in Baltimore, Washington, Brooklyn and San Bernardino, Calif., candidly describing their illicit business and asking the advice of Acorn workers. Among other questions, they asked how to buy a house to use as a brothel employing under-age girls from El Salvador. Mr. O'Keefe, 25, a filmmaker and conservative activist, was dressed so outlandishly that he might have been playing in a risque high school play.

And again:

But never has his work had anything like the impact of the Acorn expose, conducted by Mr. O'Keefe and a friend he met through Facebook, 20-year-old Hannah Giles. Their travels in the gaudy guise of pimp and prostitute through various offices of Acorn, the national community organizing group, caught its low-level employees in five cities sounding eager to assist with tax evasion, human smuggling and child prostitution.

Honestly Patterico. If you're going to try to play this game, get a Nexis account. Or at least Google.

UPDATED: Oh yeah, according to Patterico I'm the “hack.”

UPDATED: My fellow “hack,” Marcy Wheeler also has fun at Patterico's expense.

UPDATED: And three makes a trend. Blogger Brad Friedman dissects Patterico's whiff..

UPDATED: Patterico responds, kinda. (It's a mess. His new angle: Who cares anyway???)

For the record, Patterico insisted the Times never, ever reported that O'Keefe was dressed up as a pimp while inside the ACORN offices. I quite plainly proved, using the Times' own stories, that the newspaper did.

Note to Patterico: Stop digging!

UPDATED: Oh yeah, here's another example of the Times describing O'Keefe dressed as a pimp. An example, that according to Patterico, does not exist.

Behold:

Mr. O'Keefe made his biggest national splash last year when he dressed up as a pimp and trained his secret camera on counselors with the liberal community group Acorn -- eliciting advice on financing a brothel on videos that would threaten to become Acorn's undoing.

UPDATED: Believe it or not, Patterico is supposed to be a star of the RW blogosphere; one of the serious players on the far right.