Crooks and Liars Blogger Concocts Another Whopper

Posted by Dana Loesch Feb 20th 2011 at 4:58 am in Featured Story, corrections/retractions, media bias

Not quite a year ago Crooks and Liars blogger Karoli found herself retracting a story she pushed involving a man named Scott Baker and some billboards in Buffalo – all because Karoli didn’t double-check to ensure she wasn’t indicting an innocent person. Karoli smeared the wrong Scott Baker because the thought never occurred to her that there may exist on earth another individual named Scott Baker, a Scott Baker who didn’t know Andrew Breitbart.

Hilarity ensued and Karoli was forced to begrudgingly retract her piece.

Fast-forward to present time when the Internet’s resident Harriet the Spy makes the same mistake twice, this time in a story about the Wisconsin protests.

Fox News broke this bulletin about an hour ago. It stems from a video posted by the MacIver Institute Wisconsin alleging that a doctor is signing bogus excuses for teachers protesting in Madison. Because it is illegal for teachers to strike, they called in sick and have been told they will have to produce a valid doctors excuse in order to be excused for their absences.

So isn’t it interesting that a right-wing organization would produce a news report saying such excuses are fabricated? Usually, the way this works is that part of the final negotiation also forgives the days missed for protests, by the way, so this is ginned up nonsense from the start.

Her smoking gun? Christian Hartstock, an individual she predictably (and incorrectly) identifies as “works for Breitbart” was quoted in an article about doctors fabricating sick notes for illegally striking teachers, so the entire story must be bunk. Back pats and fingers-crossed for a Maddow mention, right? Wrong. Dreams, shattered! Parades, rained on! Sad pandas!



Ann Althouse writes:

I saw these people myself today. At first I thought it was some sort of comic street theater, but it was, apparently, real doctors, defending what they were doing. I’ll have my video interview up soon.
[...]
I spoke to another doctor — I assume he’s a doctor — and I asked him whether he was worried, with all the cameras here, about his reputation. He said no. But he didn’t use a political defense. He didn’t say he supported the protesters and wanted to help them. He said people really do have symptoms, and it’s a normal thing for doctors to believe patients who report symptoms and to write excuse notes for them. People call doctors all the time to get the required notes, and doctors trust the patients to report their symptoms properly. He ticked off the symptoms I’ve listed above.

I would pay to see Karoli attempt to connect Ann Althouse as a “Breitbart employee” as a way to impugn her testimony — correction: I would pay to see Althouse’s reaction.

The concept that conservatives would mill around the doctors’ tables to see if actual professional doctors were really assisting unionized teachers in defrauding the Wisconsin taxpayer never occurred to Karoli, just like any other possibility unrelated to whatever wild, goose-chase theory is bouncing around in her mind never occurs to Karoli.

Breitbart has bragged about being at the protests in Wisconsin today. Americans for Prosperity is linked to the MacIver Institute. A Breitbart video smear guy is quoted in an article smearing teachers. Figure it out.

“Bragged” as in saying that he would be there. Americans for Prosperity is linked to the MacIver Institute is linked to the Koch Brothers is linked to the grassy knoll is linked to the builders of Stonehenge. Well, at least the left has its grassroots reputation intact and doesn’t have protesters being organized and bussed up to Madison by the DNC and OFA … oh, right.

Althouse’s video of the actual doctors writing sick notes to teachers:

“I thought this was a joke …”

The Right Sphere:

Get ready to have your mind blown. One of the worst hacks in the Lefty blogosphere is claiming, with a straight face, that the video above is a hoax. Her “evidence”? The video has ties to Andrew Breitbart.
[...]
Remember the “I Need a Freakin Job” billboard someone put up in advance of an Obama visit last summer? One of the people who purchased that billboard (and started the website, now defunct) was named Scott Baker. Karoli, in a crack investigative investigation concluded that the Scott Baker who purchased the billboard, was the same Scott Baker who is an associate of Andrew Breitbart. You might have heard of him. He’s the host of TheBCast which is part of Breitbart.tv.

Read that again. Karoli, in her brilliance, concluded that there was only ONE Scott Baker in the entire US and the whole INAFJ movement was Breitbart backed astroturf. I was the one who called her out on Twitter and in the comments section of the article when I saw this ridiculousness (she blocked me afterwards).

Mind, blown! The Right Sphere has even more video and states that ABC is now reporting on the story. Gateway Pundit has another account of yet another individual receiving a fraudulent doctor’s note.
Andrew Breitbart himself received a doctor’s note.



I realize that this is Crooks and Liars we’re talking about, but even they have standards. Hopefully this will be the last time they allow one of Karoli’s BREITBART DID IT posts to run without first going through it with a fine-toothed comb.

Maybe now that this whopper has been debunked, we can focus on the implications of these doctors’ unethical actions.

Karoli needs to once again retract a story and apologize for trying to defame individuals. Prejudice is not proof.

Big Journalism