Topic: NewsBusters
Noel Sheppard is becoming something of an embarassment to NewsBusters.
On top of his cliched headlines, being shocked by the non-shocking, discredited global warming denier activism, blatant double standards, kneejerk Obama-bashing, defending Michael Savage, and the occasional use of anti-Semetic imagery in his posts, Sheppard goes off half-cocked on a regular basis, which results in having to rewrite posts to correct his erroneous outrages.
Sheppard's reign of error strikes again in a June 12 NewsBusters post on a remark by Joy Behar about wanting to see Mitt Romney's house burn down, which now begins with a notice of a "CRITICAL UPDATE AT END OF POST." And what was that CRITICAL UPDATE?
*****Update: There was an error in the original transcript posted at Mediaite that I missed. After listening to the audio numerous times with headphones, it's become apparent that Behar didn't say, "It would be kind of cool - the Mormon fire patrol." Instead she said, "Who's he going to call, the Mormon fire patrol?" As such, headline, text, and transcript have been corrected.
Mediaite expands on Sheppard's errors:
Newsbusters‘ Noel Sheppard even got a Drudge link out of the deal, aided by our early transcription error that quoted Behar as saying It would be kind of cool – the Mormon fire patrol,” when she actually said, “Who’s he going to call, the Mormon fire patrol?”
Sheppard opined, “Imagine for a moment a conservative commentator making such a remark about President Obama or any leading Democrat,” while The Blaze‘s Jonathon Seidl similarly wondered “do we really need to ask what the outrage would be if the tables were turned?”Since Joy Behar isn’t exactly beloved among right-wingers (and is probably delighted at the outrage), it seems she isn’t entitled to a reasonable person’s interpretation of her remark, which was clearly meant to raise a hypothetical in response to Romney’s call for fewer firemen, as in “I’d like to see what would happen if Mitt Romney’s house caught fire. Who’s he going to call since he doesn’t want more firemen? The Mormon fire patrol?”
But, hey, fair enough, I’m sure both sides engage in unkind interpretations of their foes’ words, and Joy isn’t some helpless babe in the woods. But what this mini-brouhaha really illustrates is the right wing’s screwed up sense of priorities. They’re at once outraged by what they all recognize as a joke (perhaps a liberal was around to explain it), and they’re outraged by the lack of outrage, and they’re outraged at the hypothetical outrage that would occur if a conservative made the same joke.
Indeed, Sheppard makes no effort to explain the full context of what Behar was responding to, stating only that they were in response o "Romney's comments on the need for more police, teachers, and firefighters." That's an utterly dishonest way to portray what Romney actually said, which was that we don't need more police, teachers, and firefighters.
And this guy is an associate editor at NewsBusters?
