TROUBLE RECOGNIZING SATIRE…. Conservative activist Hugh Hewitt published an item over the weekend from Lee Habeeb, which I’m fairly certain was intended to be a joke. The piece ran on Saturday, Oct. 24, and pointed to an event that “occurred” on Wednesday, Oct. 28. (via Karen Tumulty)
More bad news for Fox News ….. sort of.
Oct. 28, 2009 12:43 PM. This just in from Speaker of the House Pelosi. In an interview with MSNBC’s Keith Olberman [sic] last night, Nancy Pelosi announced that she would move to bring a vote to the floor of The House of Representatives as early as next week to ban Fox from covering Congress. “That Fox regularly grants access to Republican Congressman to spread their lies and propaganda on their airwaves is a violation of the public trust, and their continued desire to challenge such well documented facts as Global Warming, and the efficacy of single payer health insurance, proves that they are simply doing the work of the special interests. They should thus be stripped of their journalistic access in the halls of Congress,” argued Pelosi.
As Tumulty noted, the first clue that an item might be satire is “when it mentions dates that are in the future.”
And yet, you might be surprised at the number of blogs that ran with this as a legitimate story. Then again, if you’re familiar with far-right blogs, maybe you wouldn’t be surprised.
All of this, of course, comes on the heels of Michael Ledeen and Rush Limbaugh falling for a satirical blog post claiming to show portions of a college thesis Barack Obama didn’t write. Both eventually backpedalled when they realized they’d fallen for a joke.
Add “difficulty recognizing satire” to the list of conservative troubles.
Update: Jamison Foser reports that Glenn Beck fell for it, too.
