Why am I cursed with such clueless critics? Or, paging Patterico
Written by Eric Boehlert
Published
It's been bad enough in recent months having to debunk all of Andrew Breitbart's chronic fabrications. Now I have to deal with his flunkies? Hardly seems fair.
I'll make this brief, because it's lame even by Breitbart and Big Journalism standards. Last week I wrote a column detailing the juvenile and insulting tone the LA Times' political blog, manned by Laura Bush's former flak Andrew Malcolm, takes when writing about the President of the United States.
The right-wing blogger known as Patterico, last seen in his role as P/T Breitbart and James O'Keefe apologist, claimed it was ironic that I wrote a column attacking the Times for the insulting and disrespectful tone and then I went and cross-posted the column at an anti-Bush eeb site called Smirking Chimp. (Like Alanis Morrissette, I'm not sure Patterico understands what “ironic” means.) But Patterico's claim was not true. I didn't go and cross post my column at Smirking Chimp, and I made that plain on Monday. (Told you this was trivial.)
Patterico's response to being called out for getting his facts wrong? Simple. He launched a loopy investigation and devoted nearly 2,0000 words, covering two separate blog posts (including lots of photos of me), to sniffing around Smirking Chimp looking for clues that I did, in fact, cross-post my LA Times-related column. (I'm not making this up) But even after all that digging, Patterico remained utterly clueless about the facts. And no, not even the part at the bottom of my Smirking Chimp post that now explicitly spells out that I don't post my columns there was of use to our dogged detective.
The truth is, Patterico has deep trouble telling the truth when he's writing about topics he claims to know something about. It's utter folly for him then, to tackle topics that he's uniformly ignorant about, like where I do and don't cross-post my columns. That said, the best thing about Patterico is he's never shy about advertising his ignorance, which is why Breitbart's Big Journalism is such a perfect platform for him.
BTW, since Patterico's so interested in mundane topics like where I do and don't cross-post my column (and since he seems to share with Breitbart an unsettling obsession with me), I look forward to future Patterico investigations into what time of the day I walk my dog, and which brands of cereal I prefer. And when he gets those posts wrong, I'm sure he'll call me a liar.
Behold today's “conservative journalism.”