False Democrat Memo Makes Politics Irritating
For the LOVE OF BLOG. What purpose do false memos serve other than pissing everybody off, especially since one can't take credit for it? If we learned anything from Dan Rather's gaffes, the Internet is pretty damn good at authenticating documents. So let's go through these shenanigans yet again.
In a story that — based on their title — their website was divinely meant to cover, Talking Points Memo has a copy of a memo that saturated the political blogosphere. The initial backstory is that it came from a Democrat's office and was filled with supposed talking points on a potential "doc fix" to Medicare once the current health care bill passed, but it may have been instead been written by a subversive Republican.
Politico ran with the story as an exclusive earlier in the day than yanked the document after they weren't really sure from which septic tank it sprung. And all this story has done is irritated Democrats, Republicans, bloggers, gypsies, Cylons, and ninjas ... but then again, ninjas are always pissed off.
But the person it aggravated the most was The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder, who originally shared the memo and later issued an apology for, as he wrote, a lack of "due diligence, and I posted the item too quickly."
Hey, these false docs are great real world tests for inexperienced and veteran bloggers, but to whoever's sending them: at least the trouser stains who send out spam e-mails have the decency to harass people directly, rather than through other innocent conduits.
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