Chasing The Nut Beat

by digby

As you know, under criticism for allegedly failing to "expose" ACORN, The NY Times recently made (yet another) commitment to following the buzz generated on the right wing noise machine. Eric Boehlert (hopefully wearing a hazmat suit) dove into the toxic wingnut swill that passes for "buzz" and documents all the great "tips" the editor assigned to that beat would have gotten last week. Among other things, there was the great joy Real Americans apparently felt when the US failed in its Olympic bid. But this really takes the cake:
And then there was the stellar work produced by Andrew Breitbart, the self-styled leader of today's conservative "journalism." His site last week claimed to have uncovered a video of community organizers praying to Obama. Talk about "buzz"! Obedient right-wing bloggers such as Malkin, Atlas Shrugs, RedState, Stop the ACLU, HotAirPundit, Sundries Shack, along with cable TV talkers Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs, immediately piled on, openly mocking a group of mostly African-Americans activists as they gathered in prayer. (If second-graders aren't off-limits from being called "Obama-worshiping drones" by members of the right-wing media, why would people amidst prayer not be ridiculed, right?) One right-wing site accused the organizers of "blasphemy," and lots more shrieked as loud as they could about how the devastating video confirmed that loony liberals were falling for the Cult of Obama. RedState: "Speechless." Hot Air Pundit: "Difficult to watch." Stop the ACLU: "It's a cult." HotAirPundit: "Shocking Video."

Slight problem: When some sane people outside of Breitbart's (hate) circle actually watched the video, they realized that the community organizers who gathered weren't saying "Obama." They were saying "Oh God," which is typical when people are in prayer. So, yeah, that was a hiccup. Meaning, the only reason Breitbart posted the video was in order to smear liberal activists in prayer because he thought they were saying "Obama." That was the whole point of the video. But Breitbart bungled the audio, which meant the smear collapsed, even some right-wing bloggers, such as ... well, pretty much all them, never bothered to correct their original posts in which they called the organizers out as creepy cult members.

But Times editors please take note -- huge buzz!


Breitbart has some, shall we say, issues. No news organization should ever apologize for not taking him seriously.

At this point, if I were in the UFO, alien abduction crowd I'd be pissed that I wasn't getting equal time. They should make a big stink about it so the NY Times is forced to assign an editor to cover the "flying saucer beat."


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