Post Hack Ergo Prompter Hack

A few days ago runtish Republican Mickey Kaus was rubbing his thighs at the thought that John Kerry or his supporters misled The New York Post into announcing Gephardt as Kerry's V.P. pick. Wrote the wee weblogger:

It's not nice to scam Deborah Orin! Inspector Ellis is on the case of how the N.Y. Post may have been misled into printing its now-famous cover of Kerry and Gephardt. ... P.S.: For a moment I thought it was the Weekly World News: "Kerry Picks Space Alien As Running Mate!" [Apologies to Rick Hertzberg]... Update: Alert reader G. suggests that the story's lack of a byline means that neither Orin--nor anybody else at the paper--was comfortable putting their name on it. Maybe it wasn't a deliberate Kerry feint after all, but just somebody running into a source (e.g., a Kerry fundraiser) who swears up and down that Gephardt's the man.

("Inspector Ellis" is Bush cousin/Faux Ho John Ellis, who called Florida for Bush, just in case you don't read Howie Kurtz's shitty column.)

But the New York Times reports that the Post was misled by a lying sack much closer to the paper, namely, satellite t.v. pornographer Rupert Murdoch:

When The New York Post tore up its front page on Monday night to trumpet an apparent exclusive that Representative Richard A. Gephardt would be Senator John Kerry's running mate, the newspaper based its decision on a very high-ranking source: Rupert Murdoch, the man who controls the company that owns The Post, an employee said yesterday.

The Post employee demanded anonymity, saying senior editors had warned that those who discussed the Gephardt gaffe with other news organizations would lose their jobs.

Even more interesting: If you read the entire Ellisblog entry to which Kaus links, Ellis explicitly says that it wasn't a Kerry mislead:

None of the Above! The editors did it! Which is why the story was so weirdly written and why the "apology" was so opaque.

So the question is: Is Kaus so dense he didn't read (or understand)the entire entry, or did Ellis add the last paragraph later to make Kaus look like even more of a tool?

There is no wrong answer.