Merdeheategate

Let me break down the Tommy Christopher debacle a bit more clearly, with less sarcasm.

1. The purported point of Christopher's "Betty and Veronica" story was that Andrew Breitbart didn't publish one set of allegations that he could not verify. Somehow this makes Breitbart a paragon of journalistic ethics, despite all the false stories Breitbart has published or promoted, and the fact that journalists and millions of others people who have websites don't publish allegations they can't verify every damn day.

2. Even if Breitbart's non-publication of false information in one instance was noteworthy, it was entirely pointless for Christopher to tell the story of "Betty and Veronica." Christopher could have simply reviewed the information that Breitbart said he didn't publish, confirmed that Brietbart didn't publish that information, and written the story "Breitbart didn't publish a story he couldn't verify." There was no need to talk about or to the persons who provided the story to Breitbart, or even whether the information was true. Because the (non-)story was not Breitbart didn't publish information that was false, it was Breitbart didn't publish information he couldn't verify to be true.

3. In the course of publishing this non-story, Christopher goes to great lengths to castigate Markos Moulitsas for refusing to take down a diary on his website which purportedly contained information about the supposedly underaged girls who contacted Breitbart with the false story. Christopher makes an ass out of himself about how he's so concerned with the fate of the underaged girls, and how he's a better father than Moulitsas, and how Moulitsas is going to get his ass sued by the parents if he doesn't respond to Christopher's hysterical e-mail messages.

4. Comes the revelation that Christopher was dumbfucked by a person or persons who were pretending to be underaged girls and the mother of one of the girls. The extent of Christopher's investigation into the veracity of the story was asking for, and receiving a fax copy of a driver's license and two high school i.d. cards. The "underaged girls" and their "mother" don't exist, and ceased communication with Christopher while he was continuing to spend quality time seek contact with them (a fact not disclosed to Merdeheate's readers until Christopher was exposed as a hack).

5. Caught in the act of being dumbfucked, Christopher simpers, "Even in hindsight, the decision to run the story did not create harm, and did, in fact, prevent harm. As a journalist and a parent, I'm not sure what I would have done differently."

6. The fake story "did not cause harm." Yes. But only because Christopher and Merdeheate had no credibility to harm before the story was published.

7. The fake story "did, in fact, prevent harm." No, it didn't. The high schoolers Christopher claims he was trying to protect don't exist, and thus couldn't have been harmed.

8. "As a journalist ... I'm not sure what I would have done differently." I'm sure the second part is true. But any other person claiming to be a journalist would not have wasted 10 seconds on this tripe. And, in dealing with a person she or he had never seen or met, would have sought actual proof of identity, not a facsimile copy of a document that could be faked by anyone with an i.q. higher than Christopher's low double digits.

9. If Merdheate was a real journalistic enterprise, Christopher would have been terminated by now for his ineptitude and his shitty, self-aggrandizing writing. But it's run by Dan Abrams.