Topic: WorldNetDaily
Right-wing blogger Debbie Schlussel has read Aaron Klein's WorldNetDaily article on Barack Obama's purported Nation of Islam connections -- and she's not happy, since she wrote the same thing five months ago.
In a June 4 post, Schlussel points out that Klein's article is 'almost word for word an exact replica of most of my January exclusive." Schlussel adds:
Aaron Klein is notorious for doing this, and for making up information, which he does here. The only information in his plagiarized, non-exclusive "Exclusive" not already reported in exact words and details by me back in January, is information he made up and can't source.
Klein has a habit of dishonesty and making things up. He notoriously made up a "World Net Daily Exclusive," claiming that FOX News paid $2 million dollars to Palestinian terrorists to obtain the release of its two staffers, reporter Steve Centanni and cameraman Olaf Wiig. Klein was forced to retract the entire story. It was utter fiction.
In my own dealings with Klein--who, in marketing his book and his other "work," has repeatedly identified himself as an Orthodox Jew--the dishonesty is legion. When Klein was upset that I wrote about how another one of his "WorldNetDaily Exclusives" was actually ripped off from liberal website Crooks and Liars and had already been quoted all over the internet, Klein claimed--as his plagiarizing friend, Sean Hannity, often claims--that he doesn't read blogs. A complete lie, since most of what Klein "reports" is repeated carbon copy cut-and-paste of conservative blogs like Sweetness and Light's and BizzyBlog's newsbreaking stories about Barack Obama and other topics.
But what was really notable to me was that Klein e-mailed me his protest on the Jewish Sabbath. This is a guy who not only claims to be an Orthodox Jew but has marketed himself that way and sports a big black velvet yarmulke, a sign of very religious Orthodox observance. But the key requirement to be Orthodox is to keep the Jewish Sabbath, which includes no websurfing and e-mailing or computer use from sundown Friday Night until the nightfall Saturday Night. Then, to pimp his book, he appeared on FOX News Channel's "O'Reilly Factor" on an important Jewish holiday, an Orthodox no-no. This guy is a fraud. And he's not honest. I don't judge people by their level of religiosity or even their religion. But I do judge them by their level of integrity, and he ain't got none.
Interestingly, Schlussel is now backing away from the anonymous source that supplied her with her January "exclusive":
My Obama source claims that WND's Aaron Klein approached him, via e-mail, to do this story, and that the source responded in writing that the story was mine and that I already wrote it. Yet Klein ripped me off anyway (and the sleazy source helped him do it, just as he helped Obama win his U.S. Senate race, despite Obama's anti-Semitic and anti-Israel comments, and remained silent until recently).
The source also said he agrees with me that Aaron Klein made up the claim that he has NoI sources and that Shakir Muhammad was a Farrakhan bodyguard.
Since they're both very dishonest, it's hard to believe either of them, frankly.
Schlussel concludes: "Hey Aaron, take that yarmulke off. It's as phony as you are."
Sounds like Klein has some splanin' to do.
