Topic: WorldNetDaily
Gawker wrote about Joseph Farah and WorldNetDaily, and he's not happy about it. So unhappy, in fact, that Farah dedicated his entire Feb. 20 column to bashing Gawker.
The subject of Gawker's article was WND's current tiff with Google over blocking ads in articles taht reference "black mobs" (as we noted, WND has copped to 670 articles on the subject). Farah is shocked -- shocked! -- to find that there are less-than-friendly people on the Internet:
What’s my beef with Gawker?
It’s mean-spirited. It’s irresponsible. It’s childish and immature. I’ve never said any of that before, because there are lots of sites like Gawker that have no redeeming social value. I never think about them. I never visit them. But I did this week when one of their talentless bloggers went after WND – and me personally.
You can see it for yourself, but I would caution you the coarse, vulgar language and name-calling is pretty rough. Don’t blame me. I’m just the target. Visitor beware.
It’s never pleasant to be accused of something as ugly as racism. But I’ve gotten used to it since 2008, when Barack Obama’s cheerleaders began hurling that epithet at political opponents like it was wealth that needed to be redistributed.
But there is it again from the know-nothings at Gawker.
Do you know what else is sad about this kind of venomous, personal, ad hominem, groundless attack? It comes from a website that actually attracts a lot of viewers. What does that say about the intelligence and discernment of its mainly American audience?
Answer us this, Mr. Farah:
Is Gawker as childish and immature as WND treating a Hitler "Downfall" clip about Obamacare as a real "news' story?
Is Gawker as mean-spirited as WND repeatedly likening President Obama to Nazis and the Antichrist?
Is Gawker as irresponsible as WND publishing lies about a Tennessee car dealer, fighting the ensuing defamation lawsuit for seven years, then abruptly settling out of court before the case was to go to trial?
Is Gawker is vulgar as Farah himself saying of a Muslim scholar named Dalia Mogahed, "I call her toga head"?
Is Gawker as venomous, personal and ad hominem as Farah calling me a "talent-challenged slug" merely for daring to criticize him?
Is Gawker as groundless as WND's utterly discredited birther obsession, which has no point other than to make the birth certificate Obama's Vince Foster?
Farah goes on to lament:
I just sometimes long for the day when people who communicate for a living had some professional standards guiding them. I wonder if people like this Gawker guy would allow his children to read his posts – if he has children or knows any. I guess it would be even more disturbing if he would or does. What are their standards? Do they have any? Is it supposed to be funny? Name-calling, uniformed mockery and vulgarity might get a cheap laugh from the low-information crowd. But is that the point?
Yes, the man who runs a website that publishes lies -- and who admits that he publishes lies -- wonders if others have "professional standards." Well, one can argue that Farah does have standards: he'll publish anything that will keep the rubes glued to his website, regardless of its veracity. Not a high or admirable standard, of course, but it is a standard.
Of course, such thin-skinned tirades are par for the course from a man who's notoriously thin-skinned. And of course, such tirades are couched in self-aggrandizement about just how awesome he is, combined with a little misinformation:
I was one of the earliest pioneers of the Internet.
I founded WorldNetDaily.com, later shortened to the more manageable and memorable WND.com, in 1997.
Before that I had experimented with launching other sites – back in the days when the few people actually visiting the Internet were nearly all on dial-up connections. There were only 1 million computer users hooked up to the Internet worldwide back in those days.
How long ago was this? How much has the Internet landscape changed?
Back then, the largest, most heavily trafficked website in the world was MSNBC.com. Many observers thought this juggernaut corporate combo of Microsoft and NBC could never be approached by competitors.
Today, MSNBC.com ranks 2,295th worldwide and 530th in the U.S. – well behind WND.com.
But today's MSNBC.com is not the website of yesteryear. Farah seems to have overlooked the fact that in 2012 MSNBC.com changed its name to NBCNews.com, and the current MSNBC.com is not a general news site but one dedicated to supporting MSNBC programming.
Judging by the Alexa numbers Farah used for MSNBC.com, NBCNews.com is ranked 255th globally and 69th in the U.S. -- much bigger than WND. Farah can't even self-aggrandize honestly.
One final note: Nowhere does Farah dispute the accuracy of the information in the Gawker article -- he's merely upset that the truth was told.
