The entire right wing universe (including Drudge Report) is now screaming about this post by, yes, the Dumbest Man on the Internet again, claiming that anonymous sources told him officer Darren Wilson suffered an “orbital blowout fracture to the eye socket” in a struggle with unarmed teenager Michael Brown: BREAKING REPORT: Officer Darren Wilson Suffered “Orbital Blowout Fracture to Eye Socket” During Mike Brown Attack | the Gateway Pundit. It’s possible that someone did leak this information to Hoft, but I’ll remind my readers that Jim Hoft is probably the single most dishonest right wing blogger on the Internet as well as the dumbest, with a very long history of distorting facts and completely making stuff up to push his far right, often overtly racist agenda.
Events in Ferguson, MO, are tragic enough without embellishment or exploitation for partisan gain. Silly me; I’d have thought seeking the truth would be the priority in an effort to ensure that peaceful coexistence is the outcome. Sometimes I can be SO naive.
Turns out that there’s a concerted effort on the Far Right to do whatever it can to exonerate Darren Wilson, the officer who shot Mike Brown. I’m not going to pretend that I know the whole truth…because I don’t. I do know that my nose can smell when bullshit is being distributed and portrayed as the truth. Jim Hoft, known in some circles as The Dumbest Man on the Internet, has a history of manipulating stories in an effort to advance the Right-wing story line and “embarrass” Liberals. Of course, being The Dumbest Man on the Internet means not being particularly smart about what you do and how you do it. Turns out Hoft is ridiculously easy to debunk, and his story about Wilson’s alleged “orbital blowout fracture of the eye socket” looks to be another one Right-wing fantasy. That Fox News Channel and the Drudge Report are willing to trumpet an unsourced and unverified story should serve as indication just how low the Far Right sets the journalistic bar.
Guess what? Hoft’s story and its accompanying claims are crap. Quelle surprise, non?
Jim Hoft's Unsourced Claim That Officer Darren Wilson Had a "Fractured Eye Socket" is Pure Crap http://t.co/qA6Spjk1hD
— Charles Johnson (@Green_Footballs) August 21, 2014
It’s possible that someone did leak this information to Hoft, but I’ll remind my readers that Jim Hoft is probably the single most dishonest right wing blogger on the Internet as well as the dumbest, with a very long history of distorting facts and completely making stuff up to push his far right, often overtly racist agenda.
For whatever reason, Hoft seems obvious to the reality that fact-checking in the Internet era is fast, easy, and- in his case- usually devastating to dishonest ideologues.
It’s quite possible that when the truth comes out, Darren Wilson may be exonerated. It seems unlikely, but as I’ve already said, I don’t know the whole truth. None of us do. Divining that truth will take time, effort, and a desire for fairness and seeing that justice is done. The truth will not be discovered by racist ideologues who pursue their agenda at whatever cost to their credibility and reputation.
The sad thing about Hoft is that he’s a veritable hit parade of Right-wing propaganda that he tries (ineffectively) to dress up as unvarnished truth. He’s been debunked- usually by Charles Johnson- more times than I can recall. Yet Hoft continues pedaling his disinformation and passing it off as “BREAKING NEWS!!!!”
Speaking of breaking news, did I mention that Jim Hoft has the scoop on how Mike Brown’s autopsy is a complete fraud? Interesting how lies and disinformation can circle the globe and be ready for another lap before the truth drags its sorry ass out of bed. This is why we can’t have nice things…because it leads to Right-wingers like a friend, former co-worker, and former golf partner from Houston doing things like this:
Jeremy’s a very White, very Conserative guy (and there’s nothing wrong with that) who happens to be pretty intelligent. Why he can swallow this story and be ABSOLUTELY convinced of its correctness and accuracy is beyond me. I don’t understand the predilection among folks on the right to believe the absolute worst, completely false and unproven stories without even the barest minimum of due diligence.
(PRO TIP: When you use Fox News Channel as your primary source, you’ve already lost the argument.)
It took me about two minutes to be able to discredit Hoft’s self-serving, ideologically-warped fantasy…and yet so many Conservatives (and the media they consume) swallowed it whole. Jeremy’s by no means alone, but it points out why it’s so difficult to find middle ground anymore. When one side is wedded to propaganda and disinformation, and with people like Jim Hoft willing to obliterate the truth to feed that hunger, what hope do we have for a reasoned, rational dialogue? What we’re left with is people yelling at one another across a vast, unbridgeable divide.
So much for harmony and coexistence.
