Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Once upon a time...
A reporter for the NY Daily News made a joke. And a young fellow working for Breitbart.com, dumb enough to be an editor, picked up on the joke and declared it BREAKING NEWS.
Friedman wrote on Tuesday, “I became part of an inadvertent demonstration of how quickly partisan agendas and the Internet can transform an obvious joke into a Washington talking point used by senators and presidential wannabes.”And so a baseless attack on an honorable man who has served his country began. It ended quickly enough but the sewer crawling slime that started it have yet to admit they were wrong, much less apologize.
On February 6, said Friedman, he phoned a Republican staffer on Capitol Hill to ask about rumors that Hagel, whose nomination has been filibustered by Senate Republicans, had addressed “controversial” groups.
Republican skepticism was centered around Hagel’s supposed hostility to Israel. “So, I asked my source,” Friedman said, “had Hagel given a speech to, say, the ‘Junior League of Hezbollah, in France?’ And: What about ‘Friends of Hamas?’”
“The names were so over-the-top, so linked to terrorism in the Middle East, that it was clear I was talking hypothetically and hyperbolically. No one could take seriously the idea that organizations with those names existed — let alone that a former senator would speak to them,” he wrote.
When Friedman didn’t hear back from the source, he followed up with a snarky email, “Did he get $25K speaking fee from Friends of Hamas?”
Hearing nothing from the source, he let the story drop.
The next day, conservative website Breitbart.com blasted the headline, “SECRET HAGEL DONOR?: WHITE HOUSE SPOX DUCKS QUESTION ON ‘FRIENDS OF HAMAS.’”
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