The Pretty Hate Machine Fails At Math

Eric Bohlert runs down the timeline on the 1.9 Million Invisible Teabaggers lie, and pins it on Malkinvania.

For most sane observers, what transpired over the weekend resembled a comical bout of telephone tag -- the game schoolchildren play when they whisper something into a friend's ear and then get a big laugh when, six or seven friends later, they hear how distorted the original message has become via garbled repetition. (Two million protesters!) The sad part is that right-wing bloggers are serious. They think they're engaging in some bold new era of citizen journalism. Instead, they just, you know, make stuff up.

It's just the latest example in a string of unforgettable whoppers from online conservatives who rarely let the facts get in the way of a good story. And, yes, irony abounds in that right-wing bloggers hate the press and that they hate the practice of journalism. They lecture reporters about accountability and fairness all the time, yet whenever amateur conservatives try their hand at reporting, they just produce guffaws for the rest of us. (Did I mention they miscalculated the size of the crowd by 1,930,000 people?)

On Saturday, facts didn't matter because right-wing ringleader Malkin was helping to spread a sprawling (and illogical) lie, and her dutiful followers knew just what to do: spread it hard and fast. Perhaps Malkin's only regret was she didn't aim higher; she could have claimed there were news reports of 12 million people protesting in D.C., and I'm sure every one of her willingly gullible devotees would have linked to her.

The amusing part of the weekend's blind-leading-the-blind charade was that Malkin already has a very long and detailed history of manufacturing phony stories that later leave nasty stains all over the blogosphere when they turn out to be turds. (Paging Jamil Hussein.) And that's what I think was so revealing about the 2 million-people-in-D.C. fiasco: Nobody within the right-wing blogosphere seems to be the slightest bit upset, let alone embarrassed or chastened, for having been part of a farcical, inept attempt to inflate the size of Saturday's rally by 1,930,000 people. Nobody seems to think it reflects poorly on them as a community, or that it will damage their collective reputation.

They really are shameless. And they really do inhabit their own parallel political universe where everyone's allergic to facts.

It deserves to be said again: they run on lies, they always have, and they always will.