At least, that's the word of the day for Eric Boehlert, who uses the term no less than 18 times in the column. Evidently Eric learned a new word in school today and just has to use it everywhere.
The funny part is, as someone at Patterico's Pontifications points out, the term seems to only apply to conservatives who blog at all about the war (I guess it would include me, amusingly enough). Lefties who rant and rave about the war are spared the appellation, presumably because they say things Boehlert likes.
Patterico points out in his post that for all Boehlert's ranting about warbloggers not admitting they were wrong about Jamil-Jamail Hussein, Boehlert has an error in his column, as well.
Boehlert’s error, you may recall from an earlier post of mine, was made in a recent column, in which he reported that Hussein “was under arrest” Thursday. As evidence, that column cited a report that said only that Hussein “faces” arrest — and which also makes clear that any prosecution is unlikely.
My guess: Boehlert wanted Hussein to have actually been arrested, so that he could pin that on bloggers. So he wished and hoped, and voila! in his mind, it was so. And so that’s what he wrote.
Is he unaware of the error? Nah. Not only did I do a post about it, I left a comment on the column where it occurred.
Ahh, karma.
For what it's worth, the flap over Hussein wasn't simply about his existence. True, there were some that questioned whether he existed at all, but many others questioned why A.P. used a source that was persona non grata, particularly because of other faulty information. In this case, the problem is that the original A.P. story claimed that four mosques were also burned, but that part of the story was later dropped without explanation.
Frankly, A.P. and the liberal lovers at Media Matters are really concerned with whether Hussein exists. This is only their opportunity to claim that bloggers--oops, warbloggers--have no credibility. But that's a difficult claim to make when your own column has unacknowledged errors in it.
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