Pretty damned funny:
A Las Vegas man claims he started a false rumor that the injuries suffered by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid several months ago were the result of an attack by Reid’s brother, not an exercise accident.
Larry Pfeifer, a 50-year-old former consultant in the nightclub and entertainment industry, said he fabricated the story after becoming appalled that right-wing political blogger John Hinderaker published a rumor that Reid’s injuries stemmed from an assault by a Mafia enforcer. Pfeifer said he pitched his fake story about the Reid brothers’ supposed fight to Hinderaker, author of the Power Line blog, to test whether the blogger would publish it, as well. When Hinderaker reported it and the rumor was subsequently spread by others in conservative media, Pfeifer says he began plotting to self-report it as a lie to show the lack of credibility and journalistic standards among partisan media figures.
“It was just so outrageous,” he said. “The fact that someone can say something completely false that can destroy somebody’s life, it’s just wrong. Where’s the moral compass?”
Pfeifer, who describes himself as a motivational speaker who is involved in addiction counseling, said he completely concocted the story that Reid’s brother, Larry, showed up intoxicated at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting on New Year’s Eve in Henderson and claimed to have beaten up a relative.
Pfeifer said the media figures who published and broadcast the rumor did so without corroboration and without knowing his true identity. He revealed to them that he was using a pseudonym, he said, yet none demanded proof of his true identity.
The rumor spread quickly after Hinderaker published it April 3, landing Pfeifer on conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham’s radio program six days later when Hinderaker was a guest host, and leading to a conversation between Pfeifer and Rush Limbaugh. Pfeifer said he tried to get on Limbaugh’s show, where he planned to admit he’d made up the story.
“I thought the whole thing would be over in a day and a half,” he said. “I wasn’t after 15 minutes of fame. I wanted a platform where I could present this as what it was and 2 million people would pick up on it.”
He said he decided to present the truth after Limbaugh rejected him as a guest but repeated the rumor April 15 on his talk-radio show.
That would be Time Magazine’s Blog of the Year in 2004.
(via LGF)
Yatsuno
Read that earlier. All that matters is something bad got said about a Democrat and THEY’RE JUST ASKING QUESTIONS ITS OUT THERE NOW!!! Of course the two mentioned in the article are hardly journalists.
Side note: that article is essentially a confession to slander. He was probably better off bring quiet.
Bobby B.
Addiction counselling and he drags AA into his fraud? I have no words…
Gene108
@Yatsuno:
He was not better off being quiet, but at this point those plugged into right-wing media do not care about reality; they want their fantasy world of rugged individualism, Reagan saving the Republic from liberal hordes, and the inalienable monolithic truth of Christianity (because all Christian sects have the same interpretation of the Bible).
And everyone else knows they are a group of people living in a fantasy land.
If this sort of stunt was pulled thirty years ago, maybe the MSM may have realized how dishonest right-wing journalism is, but now the damage is done.
Too little to late.
BillinGlendaleCA
I’m reading a book that’s full of tales like these, “The Hunting of the President”. Having been and adult at the time and reasonably informed about the shitstorm of the ’90’s, I thought I knew most everything about the “Clinton scandals”. I was wrong. I see why Bill and Hillary seem a bit paranoid, they really are out to get them.
Exurban Mom
@Bobby B.: Actually, that is the clue that should have had the conservatives questioning the veracity of the report: AA meetings are supposed to be places where people can speak freely without concern that their words will be repeated. If someone called a reputable journalist with such a report, it should have been immediately suspect.
fuckwit
He did this particular griefing prank in a sloppy, not very thoughtful way, but at least someone did it. It’s a cache poisoning attack.
Imagine if a bunch of people start doing this though? Consistently, overwhelmingly, and from all angles, like a DDoS attack? The wingnut wurlitzer will need to start fact-checking stuff. And then it would learn to grow the fuck up, or would cease to be effective, or both.
As I recall, the wingnut wurlitzer has used cache poisoning attacks before. I remember there was some controversy about some female conservative politician– I think maybe it was Nikki Haley– and some affair she had, and the guy who was her lover came forward. Well the wingnut ratfuckers hired some freakish-looking character to go on TV and claim he was her lover. He was so patently ridiculous that people started laughing, it discredited the entire story,and the media just dropped it, and she got reeleccted handily.
We can do this to the wingnut media all day long.: feed them bullshit stories and watch them eat it up yum. All it takes is people with the creativity to do it.
KG
@Exurban Mom: in fairness, most of what the rightwing blogsphere knows of AA (and related groups), they learned from the first 20 minutes of Fight Club.
Villago Delenda Est
Exqueeze me, but isn’t Hinderaker a practicing attorney? Why hasn’t he been disbarred for his total lack of moral fiber? For his willingness to spread stories without the slightest hint of corroboration? Isn’t he a vile pustule on the already suspect legal profession?
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@fuckwit:
BWAHAAHAA! (snort)
shell
That’s because there’s never any repercussions for hacks circulating any bullshit they see fit. Heck, they don’t even have to put out any kind of retraction or correction.
scav
Sokal hoax retread. Sun, New, Underneath, see thereunto.
Peale
Would have been a better story if the mob was unhappy about the lie that they beat up Harry and decided to discredit the noise machine.
KG
@fuckwit:
Nope, it’ll just go down the memory hole of the wingularity. The outrage of the day doesn’t need to be true, it just needs to be truthy, and what one perceives as truthy depends entirely on their preconceived notions. For reasons that I can’t even begin to understand, they found the idea of Harry Reid being beaten up by his relapsing alcoholic brother (or a mafia enforcer) to be something that could be true, therefore they ran with it. A certain percentage of people will believe one story or the other (or merge them into one – Harry Reid’s brother works for the mafia!), even if the exercise accident was caught to film and shown on every channel, including Fox News.
Snarki, child of Loki
@KG:
And you know that this isn’t already happening for the past 25 years, how exactly?
khead
@KG:
Did you know that the minimum wage increase in Seattle is causing all of the restaurants to go out of business? It’s only a matter of time before Seattle is Detroit.
different-church-lady
Remember this next time some digital utopian tries to tell you that “citizen journalism” will kill the mainstream media.
Corner Stone
Speaking of around the world…
Obama and Republicans Agree on the Trans-Pacific Partnership … Unfortunately
Ruckus
@KG:
It’s pretty simple actually.
Some people just like the smell of bullshit. They may even know it’s bullshit but they like it so much that they are willing to wallow in it. Or make it their life’s work.
different-church-lady
@Ruckus: True. But enough about the Daily Kos rec list…
Splitting Image
Considering the story about Dearborn Michigan being a no-go zone under Sharia law is still making the rounds, I’d say the Wurlitzer is far past the point of reclamation. This isn’t about shifty he-said, she-said and both sides do it reporting anymore. It’s about telling you to your face that the sky is orange.
In theory, right-wingers ought to eventually rebel once they see that their newscasters are even more contemptuous of them than they are of libberuls, but I’m not sure anymore that that will ever happen.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
It may not actually be necessary but looking at history, to be censured by the legal profession it appears that one has to be convicted of a crime. And a pretty serious one at that. Outright lying is not condoned, otherwise how could they defend a person they know to be guilty? Never ask their client if they did it?
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
LOL
Tommy
@BillinGlendaleCA: I am going back and reading a lot of the stuff about the Clintons and the 90s. When I went to work for most of Clinton’s time in office I had the NYT, WSJ, and Washington Post on my desk each morning. I scanned them more than I read this. Reading trade journals.
Also at the time I was not nearly as political involved even though I lived on Capital Hill in DC. The Internet wasn’t what it is like today, like YouTube videos and political blogs.
But gosh it was pretty more darn ugly then I recall. By many factors. Far right and so over-the-top conspiracy theory based.
kc
Assrocket got punked. Bahahaha!
KG
@khead: that’s a shame, Seattle is a lovely town… (/snark, obviously)
scav
@khead: All in favor of frightening off the cohort of the greater population that would believe that from such channels, Lesser Seattle member anyone?
Germy Shoemangler
And the lie never goes away, no matter how many times it’s disproved and debunked. Two weeks ago I made an offhand remark about the Affordable Care Act on a different blog, and I got two replies about death panels.
On the same blog, someone decided to mock Al Gore because he claimed to have single-handedly invent the internet.
Yesterday, this is what someone wrote in the comments section of my local news outlet: “The fact is that 85% of the Clinton foundation’s money goes to overhead, and only 15% or less goes to actual charitable donations. That puts it on par with some of the worst charities out there. This is a huge red flag.”
What I’m curious about is what percentage of people who make these comments believe they’re true (because they read them on their favorite conservative news source) and what percentage of people know they’re repeating lies, but do it anyway (because in their minds the end justifies the means)?
Tommy
@KG: My brother lived in my house 8-10 years ago. A restaurant manager before he went to college and became a Cisco networking guy. We had a Hardees in my little town (since closed down).
He’d go to Hardees and a “meal deal” might be $6.50 plus for a larger burger or chicken. At his place you could get a pasta meal, large salad, drink, silverware, tablecloth, and a waiter for $1.00 to $3.00 more. I am picky about my food and I still eat there all the time.
I know to some families that cost increase might be a lot, but I bet for many it isn’t. I bet there are a lot of people here, myself included, that if the prices went up by 10% to pay workers more wouldn’t “break” us and we’d still go there!
This pisses me off to no end I might add ….
HRA
When I was tuned it daily from 2007 till the election in 2012 to the cable news shows, my husband would escape to putter in the garage. Now while I have retired from work and he goes to work afternoons, he is tied to the cable news all morning and I am the one to escaping from it. He seeks me out to tell me what was reported on several stations including (blech) Faux. Nine times out of 10 I have already read about it on the internet and what he reports to me from the (blech) Faux or other cable stations is not at all true. Is there a cure for available for it? .
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: @Ruckus: He isn’t being censured by the legal profession because his lying isn’t taking place in the course of his legal work.
Baud
@HRA: Divorce.
Tommy
@HRA: I totally understand your husband. I mean 110%. I’ve said this a lot in the last year since I got rid of cable but about the best thing I have done recently was getting rid of cable.
I work out of my house and used to have MSNBC on like radio 12 plus hours a day.
I could go on for hours about the changes. At the top of the list is my outrage is lower (and is my blood pressure). Oh and I don’t know as much about pop culture, which I think is a very good thing.
bemused
@Villago Delenda Est:
According to law firm site where he works, he has spent 40 in commercial litigation.
MomSense
O/T? I met an older guy from FL downtown today. He was wearing a hat with an embroidered AR 15 and a combo message of don’t tread on me and come and take it.
I said hello, gave directions politely, and got the fuck away.
Baud
@Tommy: At least with Twitter, you can respond to some idiotic tweet. With cable, you can really respond directly. Unless you turn it off, you have no choice but to take it.
Baud
@MomSense:
Hopefully to New Hampshire.
Cervantes
@bemused:
Yes, he was at Harvard in the mid-’70s.
MomSense
@Baud:
Canada
Baud
@MomSense: Every little bit helps.
Cervantes
@BillinGlendaleCA:
That’s an important book.
MattF
Folks, this is politics, the way it’s practiced by the scummy overlords of the Republican Party. If the lie works, it’s a success– if not, you move on. As someone once remarked “‘What is truth’ said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.”
Cervantes
@Baud:
Mariticide.
Baud
@Cervantes:
Is that a real word?
MattF
@Baud: Apparently.
Baud
@MattF:
I don’t like it.
Tree With Water
Caitlin MacNeal of TPM reports on How It’s Done. I want Sherrod Brown on the democratic ticket in 2016, and I’d be fine if that meant the top of the ticket (I want Warren to stay put):
“..In a Saturday letter to Obama, Warren and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) hit back at Obama’s Friday comments and called on the President to make the current text of the agreement public, according to the Huffington Post.
“Members of Congress should be able to discuss the agreement with our constituents and to participate in a robust public debate, instead of being muzzled by classification rules,” the senators wrote in the letter, according to the Huffington Post.
Warren and Brown noted that the deal is classified, so while members of Congress can view the deal, the American public cannot. They also said that they are not able to discuss details of the classified deal with the public.
“We respectfully suggest that characterizing the assessments of labor unions, journalists, Members of Congress, and others who disagree with your approach to transparency on trade issues as ‘dishonest’ is both untrue and unlikely to serve the best interests of the American people,” Warren and Brown said in the letter, according to the Huffington Post.
Cervantes
@MattF:
Except that article defines it incorrectly, I’d say.
If one pays attention to the Latin root, one is bound to argue that the word applies to the killing by either spouse of the other.
Cervantes
@MattF:
Further, he said:
And in certain cases, one is tempted to believe it.
scav
@Baud: Well, if it’s not in Webster’s, it never happens. Notice how things have just gone to utter shit after the Urban Dictionary escaped the bounds of closely guarded control? And we laugh at the Académie . . .
Cervantes
@scav:
Can you elaborate all three statements? (Thanks.)
ms_canadada
@MomSense: No, thank you.
Baud
@scav:
I just assumed it was Obama’s fault.
scav
@Cervantes: Just trying to rationalize Baud’s dislike for the word as best I could. Personally, I’d be more nervous of creating the circumstances that lead to the action rather that picking on a poor little combination of letters. Alas, in my world, letter policing leads invariably to L’Académie Frogçaise (and what Webster’s clearly not doing enough of). Here endeth the verbal map of the Pretzel logic as best it can be reconstructed.
Omnes Omnibus
@MattF: Mmmmm…. Bacon.
/Homer Simpson
D58826
@Splitting Image: They still haven’t given up on who killed Vince Foster.
Corner Stone
@Tree With Water: Fast-Track: A Gut-Kick to the Progressive Movement
“The bill lays out trade policy objectives that elevate the narrow interests of large corporations and undercut efforts to support good jobs, the environment and financial stability.”
“private foreign investors are allowed to sue governments in international tribunals over actions — including public interest regulations — that reduce the value of their investments.”
Corner Stone
@D58826:
Madge. Clearly.
Corner Stone
Of course Olynyk committed that hard foul on Kevin Love on purpose. It’s fucking stupid to suggest he did anything otherwise. He had an arm bar across the top of Love’s shoulder and he then tugs down and in the opposite direction as Love is trying to break contact.
The ball wasn’t even in play for 3 or more seconds.
Mike in NC
Today’s newspaper ran an article on three of the far-right PACs gearing up to throw mud at Hillary Clinton: Crossroads GPS, Citizens United, and something new (to me) called America Rising.
D58826
Only somewhat OT. The echo chamber seems to have a new song. Pres. McNutts is claiming that there was clearly an intelligence failure (his or the CIA’s he didn’t make clear) with regard to the death of the two hostages. I guess this will become ‘Benghazi the Sequel (please send money)’.
I certainly think they should go back over the intelligence but being able to track two people whom the tewrrorists are trying to hide is not easy.
Mike J
@Corner Stone:
So now you’re saying it’s good thing. Make up your mind.
liberal
@Corner Stone: well, screw you. I have faith in President Obama; if you don’t, that’s your problem. Moreover, Liz Warren is a liar and used to be a Republican. /snark
Corner Stone
@Mike J: If you’re on the side of Congressional Republicans than I guess…shit, I don’t know what to say next.
“That’s the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), currently being pushed by the Obama administration and its corporate (and mostly Republican!) allies. It’s a blatant attack on labor, farmers, food safety, public health and even national sovereignty.”
MattF
@D58826: With Obama in charge, the lack-of-confidence fairy is everywhere and making everyone do dumb things– so it’s clearly Obama’s fault.
Corner Stone
@liberal: Everyone can read the entire bill. Unless you’re an actual person, then you can’t. And if you’re an elected representative you can read the entire bill, except for the parts we haven’t allowed you to.
But you can’t say shit about any of it.
ETA, damn, forgot the burnspbesq requirement of 67 votes.
Damn basketball.
D58826
@MattF: I didn’t mention it was Obama’s fault because I thought everyone just knew that the Commie/Muslim/terrorist/nazi/kenyan usurper was at fault. I suspect if we dig deep enough we will find that he paid for the train fare to get the hostages to that camp in the first place.
Speaking of the absurd here is a comment from Huffington on the other scandal de jur – the Clinton’s:
So if understand this correctly the Clinton’s are corrupt and the Foundation is a slush fund even thought the guy wrote the book admits that he has absolutely no evidence to back up the innuendo The story will of course be the number one topic of conversation for the next month, all the while leaving out the lack of proof part. We certainly don’t want facts to stand in the way of a juicy Clinton scandal. .
liberal
@Corner Stone: yeah, I love that 67 thing. Stupid fuck doesn’t know that it’s not that kind of treaty.
liberal
@Corner Stone: I should add, non-snarkily, that IMHO the biggest problem isn’t the secrecy. It’s that if fast track passes, it can’t be filibustered.
An interesting twist I haven’t seen discussed is what might be a faux schizm within the ranks of the daemons. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of House Republicans vote against it, and can then attack Democrats who voted for it, but that behind the scenes there’s vote counting by the Republicans to make sure it passed.
liberal
@Corner Stone: Oh, I almost forgot…as President Obama said, the TPP can’t overrule our laws and regulations!!eleventy! Of course, he left out the part about how, while those can remain on the books, a corporation that successfully appeals to the trade tribunal gets to be compensated for lost future profits.
Corner Stone
@liberal:
The right for corporations to sue for “lost” profits when governments make public good regulations should make everyone check themselves.
D58826
@liberal: What I find so interesting (well not really given the money trail) is how the GOP is falling all over itself to give Obama this expanded authority. In effect abdicating oversight to the executive branch. On the other hand they are in a tizzy about micro-managing the Iran n negotiations. The trade deal will have a much greater impact on Joe Sixpack or Rosie the Riveter than a nuclear Iran will. OF course in the pool of mega-donors there are those feeding the corporate trough and those feeding the pro-Israel through. The influence of the pro_Israel money can be seen in the two gay New York billionaires who are making nice to Calgary Ted. Why Ted’s pro-Israel stance is more important than his anti-gay stance.
Just follow the money!!!!
dr. luba
@Ruckus: “Outright lying is not condoned, otherwise how could they defend a person they know to be guilty? Never ask their client if they did it?”
Now, granted that my knowledge of British jurisprudence is limited to Rumpole of the Bailey a PBS police procedurals, but isn’t that how they do it in the UK? I was under the impression that, if a client admitted guilt to him, a barrister could not then represent the client in court (if the client insisted on claiming to be not guilty).
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
When in high school, I got called into the security office for a rumor I started that I had been thrown into a mexican prison for attempted drug smuggling during my christmas vacation to Oaxaca.
Dumb people are dumb.
Cervantes
@Corner Stone:
Right.
To the extent that Obama objected to the use of the word “secret,” he really should not have.
Omnes Omnibus
@dr. luba: One cannot offer a defense that one knows is not true.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Corner Stone:
Don’t forget Chained CPI. Obama was pushing that too, and it happened, right? Right?
What I’m saying here is that you’re full of shit, by the way.
Corner Stone
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
You were saying something about dumb people?
different-church-lady
So I’m reading through the later comments on this thread, and it’s kind of interesting how some people can simultaneously hold that nobody is allowed to know what’s in the TTP, yet they know the things in the TTP are disastrous.
Corner Stone
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): I’m sorry but what the fuck are you babbling about? Are you saying Obama isn’t going on the airwaves to call opponents of TPP dishonest? Are you saying he is not pushing fast track for TPP? Are you arguing that if it passes fast track there is a chance to change or filibuster TPP?
The fact is you’re too fucking stupid to have an internet enabled device and should just put on a thick helmet while you bump your head against the wall while playing ball on a rope catch in a cup.
Corner Stone
I think it’s kind of interesting that some people can blissfully say not knowing what’s in a “free trade” deal is acceptable as Congress authorizes fast track.
RSA
@fuckwit:
You mean, like James O’Keefe on the other side?
fuckwit
@RSA: I was thinking more like this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Tuck A bit more witty, more subversive, less nasty or mean-spirited, than O’Keefe, or his ancestors Rove, Atwater, and Segretti.
Cervantes
@scav:
Thanks for elaborating.
evodevo
@Germy Shoemangler: If my conservative co-workers, friends and relatives are any indication, THEY DON’T CARE. If it fits with their preconceptions/rightwing fantasies, it MUST be true, and if you prove to them – with links,cites, etc – that it isn’t, they change the subject in a microsecond and go off on a tangent citing the next wingnut talking point in the list (when debating fundie creationist Xtians, it’s a gambit known as the “Gish gallop”). Rushbo and company thrive because their listeners don’t want the facts, they just want the “truth”.
central texas
And as a follow-up, he could drop a hint to the NY Times that he has pictures of Hillary and Vince Foster’s love nest. Maybe Jeff Gerth could hire back on to handle it. I’m certain that they would doll it up and dish it out..