Blogs Are Vastly Superior To Traditional Media

Reynolds just can't help himself. As an update to a post on the successful landing of the Spirit rover on Mars, he snarks "Er, good news except for worshippers of Michael Moore, anyway", and links to a post by what appears to be a German blogger.

Yet more proof that anything good for America is bad for liberals.

Except...um...wait a minute. That blog Glenn links to...it seems rather...suspicious:

"I mean, this just isn't fair. It doesn't make sense. Europe's supposed to be so smart, and the Americans are - as Michael Moore told us so convincingly - "ignorant people ... who don't even have a passport"! And: "Just a handful can speak a language other than English".

Michael, where are you? We need help! MICHAEL??"

At this point, those of us used to such antics recognize deliberate stupidity, and so we scan the site's blogroll, and see that it is dominated by Rightwing blogs. Odd, that. I would think that a Michael Moore fan would link to a few liberal sites.

The joke, of course, is on anyone who takes InstaPundit seriously. The site he links is run by a Righty, one who believes in the feeble-minded idea that a valid way of discrediting the Left is to state without evidence that liberals are upset by anything good that happens to the United States.

If pressed, I'm sure that Reynolds would say that linking to a troll as proof of liberal perfidy was his idea of a joke, but that's a weak excuse that should be laughed at by anyone with a brain and a few grains of integrity. In the context of a "straight" news post, linking to someone pretending to be a liberal in order to make liberals look stupid is inexcusable. Most people won't click through the link, simply assuming that it proves what Reynolds says it does. Of those that do click through, many will read that post and that post only, and, again, will assume that it is genuine.

Which means only the small percentage of people who actually bother to look at the rest of the site realize that no, liberals are not, in fact, angered by the successful landing of the Spirit rover.

This is a classic form of deniable disinformation - it leaves the majority of people under the impression that a complete fabrication is in fact the truth, while leaving just enough wiggle room to be able to claim innocence when confronted with it.

It is very difficult to see Reynolds as anything but despicable for engaging in this sort of thing.

For the record, this is not new territory for Reynolds, and it is the reason I have absolutely no problem calling him a lying bastard, even in polite company.