One of the things I don’t do very much here, and I think it costs me traffic and readers sometimes, is post immediately when news breaks. I prefer to wait a little bit, to let the events catch up to the coverage, which usually runs way out in front of reality. That generally means that I don’t get in on the big traffic spikes because I’m not part of the initial feeding frenzy. I don’t relish having to publish corrections, though, and that’s usually what happens when you jump on a story quickly and don’t give it room to breathe.
That’s the plight a lot of bloggers on the right are going to be facing today. There was a pretty extensive story that broke a last week about threatening e-mails received by a conservative group at Princeton University. One of the people who received those e-mails was allegedly attacked and was injured.
Today, though, the story has fallen apart. The alleged victim admitted he fabricated everything: the e-mails, the alleged assault, the whole kit and caboodle. Which leaves a lot of the righty blogs in need of a few corrective posts.
It’s understandable for us on the right to jump on stories like this. For years we’ve been told that we and our ideological chums have been oppressing the masses and stifling dissent everywhere. That point has been accented with a number of “hate crimes” trumpeted loudly by the MSM which ended up being fake. Meanwhile, the very real violence committed against right-leaning public speakers and Republican campaigns has been underplayed by the MSM. Who could blame a blogger for pointing out yet another incident and jumping up and down in the hopes that someone, somewhere with a big microphine will notice it and tell someone that the story’s been all backwards for years.
Unfortunately, that impulse leads to frauds like this. It’s a shame that the young man who fabricated the “hate crime” felt that was somethign he needed to do. Clearly, it wasn’t. There are ample examples of the left’s predeliction toward violence and oppression in the service of its noble goals. All you have to do is keep your eyes open.
(via The Corner)
