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Veteran Expediter
Link: Jim Hoft: Dumbest Man on the Internet? | Media Matters for America
A lot of the examples given will no doubtedly sound familiar to those in the Soapbox.
Jim Hoft: Dumbest Man on the Internet?
September 21, 2010 2:44 pm ET by Ben Dimiero
With a few exceptions, the upper echelon of the conservative blogosphere is a mess.
Breitbart's "Big" websites traffic in misleading non-scandals and have published people like 9-11 truther Michael Moriarty, racist penis-enlarger/vagina-tightener Kevin Pezzi, and former SNL actress/spouter-of-incomprehensible nonsense Victoria Jackson. NewsBusters and The Media Research Center spend a lot of time finding the liberal bias in television shows that don't treat their gay characters as ostracized sub-humans.
Atlas Shrugs is run by a woman that is haunted at every turn by Islamic crescents, and whose hatred for the president once compelled her to claim that his penchant for "purple" (actually blue) neckties meant that Democrats were "Flying the Gangsta Colors at the White House." Confederate Yankee Bob Owens - who also writes for Breitbart and the Washington Examiner - openly speculates about whether he and an army of "freshly-experienced combat veterans and graying patriots" are going to have to start killing people to combat the "slavery" of health care reform.
But despite all this stiff competition, Jim Hoft (aka Gateway Pundit) stands out as uniquely incompetent. Hoft runs with (or spawns) almost every inane story that bubbles up in the conservative blogosphere, has proven that he has absolutely no vetting process for the sources he cites, and apparently has a hard time with basic reading comprehension.
Hoft -- who has modeled for a John Deere catalogue and "played a cop on 'Unsolved Mysteries' twice" -- has "never had any training in politics or journalism," but now has the "#8 ranked political blog in the United States" that is "frequently mentioned on top national news shows."
Indeed, in spite of the fact that Hoft embarrasses himself on a near-daily basis and has shown time and again that he is either willfully dishonest or staggeringly inept, he has managed to carve out a role as one of the most-read, most respected writers in the conservative blogosphere. And his influence extends beyond the blogs. Hoft's stories are regularly featured on Fox News' Fox Nation website, and he has been cited as a source on-air by Fox News on multiple occasions.
Hoft's ongoing position of influence in the conservative media is evidence that the entire movement is intellectually bankrupt.
Who are you going to believe - Jim Hoft or your lying eyes?
Hoft regularly posts innocuous images that he twists into nonsensical attacks on Democrats and progressives.
When you look at this picture of Obama, what do you see?
If you answered "the president scratching his face" or "Obama holding up two fingers," you are right. But according to Hoft, that is actually a picture of the "child president" "flipping off" House Minority Leader John Boehner. In a July post, Hoft announced in a headline that "Obama Flips Boehner The Bird During Racine Speech," and explained that Obama "just can't help himself." It's unfathomable that it is necessary to explain this to an influential blogger (or any adult, for that matter), but it is not possible to "flip the bird" with multiple fingers extended on the same hand.
How about this one:
This, of course, is Rev. Al Sharpton speaking at a rally, perhaps waving to someone. But in Hoft's world, this is Sharpton giving a "Nazi salute." After Sharpton spoke at an August 28 rally in Washington, D.C., Hoft posted video of the speech - and the above still photo -- under the headline "Heil Al!... Sharpton Gives Nazi Salute at Rally?" Hoft was upset that the "media ignored this" shocking story.
What about this image of the Nuclear Security Summit logo?
While the logo may seem non-controversial to you, Hoft's eagle eyes spotted "an Islamic crest" hidden in the design. This was especially "weird" to Hoft, because "we all know [Obama's] a good Christian." (This particular bit of conservative stupidity, which Fox News and others ran with, was debunked by Jon Stewart, who noted that the "inspiration for the logo is actually the Rutherford-Bohr model of the atom.")
As long as you don't look at his evidence, Hoft's arguments hold up well
Another of Hoft's neat tricks is to make an outlandish argument and then cite evidence that actually refutes the point he's trying to make.
In the heat of the "Ground Zero mosque" controversy, Hoft purported to "fact check" the AP's assertion that there already exists a mosque five blocks from Ground Zero. Hoft claimed that the mosque in question "was evicted years ago according to their website," and excerpted the following statement as evidence:
The only way Hoft's "fact check" held up was if you stopped reading after the first sentence. But as the rest of the statement made clear, the operators of the mosque "did not have to close the Masjid" and found a location "just two doors down" from the original. Hoft either did not bother to read past the first sentence, or he did read it, decided it didn't matter, and assumed his readers to be too stupid or gullible to know the difference.
In July, conservatives spent a week lying about the Obama administration supposedly "supporting" the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi. The talking point was completely demolished when the State Department released its correspondence with the Scottish Ministry of Justice, which stated in plain English that the administration was "not prepared to support Megrahi's release on compassionate release or bail." Undeterred, Hoft linked to the State Department letter and declared that the administration "preferred" Megrahi's release.
This up-is-down method of argumentation once led Hoft to accuse Desmond Tutu of being a "Jew-hater." The article that he linked to as evidence of Tutu's supposed anti-Semitism was about the Anti-Defamation League urging a Minnesota university to allow Tutu "to speak just days after it was revealed that he had been disinvited because of fears he might offend Jews." The article quoted the ADL's national director as saying that Tutu "certainly is not an anti-Semite and should not be so characterized and therefore refused a platform."
A lot of the examples given will no doubtedly sound familiar to those in the Soapbox.
Jim Hoft: Dumbest Man on the Internet?
September 21, 2010 2:44 pm ET by Ben Dimiero
With a few exceptions, the upper echelon of the conservative blogosphere is a mess.
Breitbart's "Big" websites traffic in misleading non-scandals and have published people like 9-11 truther Michael Moriarty, racist penis-enlarger/vagina-tightener Kevin Pezzi, and former SNL actress/spouter-of-incomprehensible nonsense Victoria Jackson. NewsBusters and The Media Research Center spend a lot of time finding the liberal bias in television shows that don't treat their gay characters as ostracized sub-humans.
Atlas Shrugs is run by a woman that is haunted at every turn by Islamic crescents, and whose hatred for the president once compelled her to claim that his penchant for "purple" (actually blue) neckties meant that Democrats were "Flying the Gangsta Colors at the White House." Confederate Yankee Bob Owens - who also writes for Breitbart and the Washington Examiner - openly speculates about whether he and an army of "freshly-experienced combat veterans and graying patriots" are going to have to start killing people to combat the "slavery" of health care reform.
But despite all this stiff competition, Jim Hoft (aka Gateway Pundit) stands out as uniquely incompetent. Hoft runs with (or spawns) almost every inane story that bubbles up in the conservative blogosphere, has proven that he has absolutely no vetting process for the sources he cites, and apparently has a hard time with basic reading comprehension.
Hoft -- who has modeled for a John Deere catalogue and "played a cop on 'Unsolved Mysteries' twice" -- has "never had any training in politics or journalism," but now has the "#8 ranked political blog in the United States" that is "frequently mentioned on top national news shows."
Indeed, in spite of the fact that Hoft embarrasses himself on a near-daily basis and has shown time and again that he is either willfully dishonest or staggeringly inept, he has managed to carve out a role as one of the most-read, most respected writers in the conservative blogosphere. And his influence extends beyond the blogs. Hoft's stories are regularly featured on Fox News' Fox Nation website, and he has been cited as a source on-air by Fox News on multiple occasions.
Hoft's ongoing position of influence in the conservative media is evidence that the entire movement is intellectually bankrupt.
Who are you going to believe - Jim Hoft or your lying eyes?
Hoft regularly posts innocuous images that he twists into nonsensical attacks on Democrats and progressives.
When you look at this picture of Obama, what do you see?
If you answered "the president scratching his face" or "Obama holding up two fingers," you are right. But according to Hoft, that is actually a picture of the "child president" "flipping off" House Minority Leader John Boehner. In a July post, Hoft announced in a headline that "Obama Flips Boehner The Bird During Racine Speech," and explained that Obama "just can't help himself." It's unfathomable that it is necessary to explain this to an influential blogger (or any adult, for that matter), but it is not possible to "flip the bird" with multiple fingers extended on the same hand.
How about this one:
This, of course, is Rev. Al Sharpton speaking at a rally, perhaps waving to someone. But in Hoft's world, this is Sharpton giving a "Nazi salute." After Sharpton spoke at an August 28 rally in Washington, D.C., Hoft posted video of the speech - and the above still photo -- under the headline "Heil Al!... Sharpton Gives Nazi Salute at Rally?" Hoft was upset that the "media ignored this" shocking story.
What about this image of the Nuclear Security Summit logo?
While the logo may seem non-controversial to you, Hoft's eagle eyes spotted "an Islamic crest" hidden in the design. This was especially "weird" to Hoft, because "we all know [Obama's] a good Christian." (This particular bit of conservative stupidity, which Fox News and others ran with, was debunked by Jon Stewart, who noted that the "inspiration for the logo is actually the Rutherford-Bohr model of the atom.")
As long as you don't look at his evidence, Hoft's arguments hold up well
Another of Hoft's neat tricks is to make an outlandish argument and then cite evidence that actually refutes the point he's trying to make.
In the heat of the "Ground Zero mosque" controversy, Hoft purported to "fact check" the AP's assertion that there already exists a mosque five blocks from Ground Zero. Hoft claimed that the mosque in question "was evicted years ago according to their website," and excerpted the following statement as evidence:
The only way Hoft's "fact check" held up was if you stopped reading after the first sentence. But as the rest of the statement made clear, the operators of the mosque "did not have to close the Masjid" and found a location "just two doors down" from the original. Hoft either did not bother to read past the first sentence, or he did read it, decided it didn't matter, and assumed his readers to be too stupid or gullible to know the difference.
In July, conservatives spent a week lying about the Obama administration supposedly "supporting" the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi. The talking point was completely demolished when the State Department released its correspondence with the Scottish Ministry of Justice, which stated in plain English that the administration was "not prepared to support Megrahi's release on compassionate release or bail." Undeterred, Hoft linked to the State Department letter and declared that the administration "preferred" Megrahi's release.
This up-is-down method of argumentation once led Hoft to accuse Desmond Tutu of being a "Jew-hater." The article that he linked to as evidence of Tutu's supposed anti-Semitism was about the Anti-Defamation League urging a Minnesota university to allow Tutu "to speak just days after it was revealed that he had been disinvited because of fears he might offend Jews." The article quoted the ADL's national director as saying that Tutu "certainly is not an anti-Semite and should not be so characterized and therefore refused a platform."
