David Kirkpatrick!

Wide-eyed, dewy innocence can be a very attractive characteristic. But not in a national political correspondent at the World's Greatest Newspaper (not!). Of the false story, originally propagated by a Moonie web site, that Barack Obama attended a madrassa when young, Kirkpatrick is actually quite well-paid to write:

Feeding Frenzy for a Big Story, Even if It’s False

A very balanced headline, eh? I mean, it's not like the false information was propagated, or anything. Of course, editors write the headlines, not reporters, so Kirkpatrick isn't really responsible for it. But he is responsible for this:

The controversy started with [the] quickly discredited Jan. 17 article on the Insight Web site ... To most journalists, the notion of anonymous reporters relying on anonymous sources is a red flag. ... But hosts of morning television programs and an evening commentator on the Fox News Network nevertheless devoted extensive discussion to Insight’s Clinton-Obama article, as did Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk radio hosts.

Oh my goodness! "Nevertheless"?!?!

For years, for the past fucking decade, we've been seeing a veritable winger meme transmission belt where unsourced winger talking points surface in the overtly delusional sectors of the wingersphere, and then rapidly get mainstreamed.

The Insight-to-Limbaugh-to-Fox transmission is the norm. Why in the name of sweet suffering Jeebus does Kirkpatrick treat Limbaugh and FUX as newsgathering organizations with reporting standards like [cough] the Times, when they're outlets for winger propaganda?

Watch as Kirkpatrick points to dot after dot, yet refused to connect them! The horror! The horror!

And the Fox News rival [sic] MSNBC has picked up several of Insight’s other recent anonymous “scoops.”

Officials of the Unification Church closed the print magazine about a year and a half ago, and tapped Mr. Kuhner to run it as a stand-alone Web site.

And now, in the very last paragraph:

After Insight posted the article on Jan. 17, Mr. Kuhner said, he was disappointed to see that the Drudge Report did not link to it on its Web site as it has done with other Insight articles. So, as usual, he e-mailed the article to producers at Fox News and MSNBC.

"As usual..." (How Kirkpatrick can rationalize the "nevertheless" above, which suggests that FUX and MSNBC are news organizations, with the "as usual" below, which suggests that they are outlets for bottom-feeding winger propaganda, is left as an exercise for the reader.)

Moonies (dot) ... Insight (dot)... FUX (dot) ... MSNBC (dot) ... Limbaugh (dot)... All wingers working together "as usual"... (dot)

You'd almost think there's a... Now what would be the phrase that Hillary invented... It's on the tip of my tongue... Damn... Starts with a "C"... Or maybe a "V"....

NOTE Shystee is still The Man on the VRWC.

NOTE So, if Obama had attended a Christianist madrassa like Liberty University, that would have been OK?