Trig Trutherism, Again

No, I'm not double-posting accidentally -- I know Slublog covered this below.

A couple of points I'd make:

First, a lot of these guys say "leave this alone, no good can come of it" before going into a "but if it's true..." scenario, and it's usually the "if it's true..." scenario that has the most attention lavished on it.

Second: Is the MFM going to cover this? They certainly squealed a lot when some right wingers (almost none in the commentariat) gave credence to the birth certificate conspiracy theory.

But here is the creme de la creme of young liberal thought-leaders (well, maybe not creme de la creme, but chosen by Ezra Klein of the Washington Post as being important seriously discussing the ramifications if the wackiest conspiracy theory since 9/11 Trutherism (and maybe wackier than that) is true or not.

I like Slublog's point: Maybe Andrew Sullivan continues to push this despite putative damage to his reputation among the liberal chattering class because in fact there is no damage to his reputation among the liberal chattering class about it; they're all around 50% on board with it, and repeatedly say "However, if some reporter thinks this rumor is worth investigating further, and he or she absolutely nails this story, that would be great."

I submit that based on these emails, the liberal chattering class does sort of believe this, or at least isn't terribly interested in dissuading others from investigating -- after all, if someone should happen to "nail this story," then "that would be great."

So is this why the MFM refuses to note that the left is taken with bizarre conspiracy theories of their own? Because to the MFM as a whole the conspiracy theory seems like it's sort of maybe true?

As Bob Shieffer (aka Bot Shieffert) said, they won't publish "unless they think a story is true." Well, if they think Trig Trutherism might be true -- and it sure seems that about half of them do, but refrain from saying so publicly purely for prudential, careerist reasons -- then I guess they wouldn't be able to expose this insanity for what it is.

posted by Ace at 01:54 PM

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