Saturday, January 06, 2007

The most redundant blog post ever written.


Glenn Greenwald dissects the "credibility" of the right-wing blogosphere. And, somewhere, I'm sure Kate McMillan is wondering how any of that applies to her.

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST! If I hadn't seen it myself, I wouldn't have believed it. Look here ... an honest-to-God, right-wing retraction:

Via InstaPundit, the intrepid reporter whose site insinuated that the photo of John Kerry sitting alone in a chow hall in Iraq was itself bogus, has now verified that the photo is real, but the absence of troops in it is misleading:

Specifically, it turns out that Kerry was at that table to conduct an off-the-record breakfast discussion with two reporters, so there would have been no reason whatsover for troops to be sitting with them. In fact, Kerry and the reporters even sought out empty seats, I’m told.

And he backs it up by talking to the reporters involved. So it turns out that Kerry et al sought out the empty table to have a private conversation. That makes sense to me, so I hereby retract calling Sen. Kerry “lonely.” He wasn’t lonely. I apologize for the error...

But that said, again, I retract calling Sen. Kerry “lonely” and regret the error.

What the hell? A blog post from the Right containing the words "apologize" and "regret" and "error?" What is the world coming to?

BY THE WAY
, while giving credit for integrity to the author of the above retraction, it's still fair to suggest that he deserves a good towel snap to the nads.

To have suggested that John Kerry, based on that photograph, was "lonely" or was being shunned by the troops wasn't merely a "mistake" or an "error." Given that no one originally knew the context of that photograph, to have drawn any conclusions whatsoever was simply dishonest.

This wasn't just an "error" -- it was your typical right-wing sleazefest based on a single photo whose provenance was entirely unknown at the time. But, still -- props to the blogger above for having the ethics to admit to the colossal fuck-up.

IT'S LIKE THEY SAW HER COMING
. From Media Matters: "Warbloggers refuse to admit their errors in making fraud allegations against AP." Hee hee. Sound like anyone you know?

Lord, but this just never loses its entertainment value, does it?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dude: If the right wing is apologizing, can The Rapture (ie the end of the world) be far behind?

Anonymous said...

Yeah, a right-winger with more guts than you who (1) can admit being wrong and (2) can do so without added snark that invalidates (1). Who'd have thunk it?

CC said...

Dear noyb:

You are coming perilously close to violating the cardinal rule for commenters at this site, which is that you have to be at least moderately entertaining, and at least minimally informative. Currently, you're neither, and the grown-ups are getting bored.

So either say something worth saying, or take a hike. The choice is entirely yours.

Anonymous said...

KKKate's bases most of her work on this kind of dishonesty...she'll throw out a baseless assertion, knowing full well that the worst she'll have to do is admit that she was in "error." Which I don't think she's ever even done, but a devious person such as KKKate knows all about "plausible deniability."

The fact remains that baseless assertions can in fact be considered lies; just clever ones because they can only be absolutely characterised as such if the originator's intent ever becomes known (usually with confession). That hardly ever happens with wingnuts, who are born liars.

Anonymous said...

Cynic,

You spend so much time talking about Kate McMillan that one wonders just how big a crush on her you have. Just man up and call her. Get it over with. Although I'd lose the slut comments and the constant references to male genitalia.

Anonymous said...

I see that Jamil Hussein has actually been arrested. I wonder if the attention he'd received from the right-wing bloggers has anything to do with this totalitarian action and his possible torture and death at the hands of the death-squad/Iraqi Ministry of the Interior.

I actually made this my little hobby-horse with sda's world o' delusion.

After having read about 20 threads on that site in the past few years, I've come to the conclusion that KKKate is the sort of person who is so stupid that her thoughts and actions veer well into the realm of madness.

In a better world she would not be one of the more popular Canadian political blogs.

Anonymous said...

ti-guy preaches: "The fact remains that baseless assertions can in fact be considered lies; just clever ones because they can only be absolutely characterised as such if the...<-snip whining->"

So what's wrong with lying, Mr. Holier than thou? Stop trying to impose your Judeo-Christian morality hate speech on the world! Hatespeaking racist!

Anonymous said...

oops, somebody's gone a wee bit crazee.