Topic: NewsBusters
Lachlan Markay runs to the defense of blogger Ben Domenech in an April 18 NewsBusters post, portraying him as being unfairly attacked over his repeating of a claim that possible Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is gay.
Markay defended the presumed truth of the claim by citing -- we kid you not -- a Twitter post from a "left-wing blogger." (Domenech cited the same blogger as "proof.") Markay added:
Groups claiming to defend gay rights -- and the White House itself -- pounced on Domenech's statement, apparently presuming that the claim that Kagan was gay was in fact an attack. But liberal and conservative minds both rejected that notion.
[...]
Regardless of one's stance on homosexuality -- or the issue's pertinence to a Supreme Court nominee's eligibility -- it seems apparent that Domenech was noting Kagan's sexuality out of the purely benevolent sense of the gay community's pride and progress.[...]
It was the groups claiming to defend gay rights, not Domenech, that presumed the (false) claimed that Kagan was a homosexual was a veiled attack and part of some right-wing whisper campaign. It was not, and there was no whisper campaign.
How does Markay know Domenech was acting in a "benevolent" manner by mentioning Kagan's presumed homosexuality? He doesn't -- he's merely giving the guy the benefit of the doubt, something we doubt he would give a liberal blogger caught making a similar claim.
We don't know Domenech's true intentions either, but we know his track record, which includes a history of plagiarism that got him fired from a blogging job at the Washington Post. We think that's worth mentioning in a discussion of Domenech's blogging work; Markay apparently does not.
