Soccer Dad

The msm and their superior fact checking ability

via memeorandum

A number of outlets (traditional and not) fell for a guy who claimed to be in the McCain campaign. The New York Times used the opportunity to suggest that the fraud gained credibility largely due to credulous bloggers.

But most of Eisenstadt's victims have been bloggers, a reflection of the sloppy speed at which any tidbit, no matter how specious, can bounce around the Internet.

This guy was especially bad.

Almost half of young Americans said in a 2006 poll that it was not necessary to know the locations of countries where important news was made. That must be a relief to Sarah Palin, who, according to Fox News, didn't realize that Africa was a continent rather than a country.

But he's not a blogger. That's Nicholas Kristof. A columnist for the New York Times.

I realized he qualified his charge by crediting the information to Fox News (who bought into the Martin Eisenstadt hoax) but he certainly seems to be treating it as true. (His first column after the hoax had been exposed, did not address his gullibility.)

It didn't take that much to figure out what was wrong with some of the claims, but such an exercise was too much for Kristof, who was exulting that Americans had just elected an intellectual to be president. Nice display of intellectual curiosity.

Related thoughts at Maryland Conservatarian.