Beltway Snark

About a week ago “Amanda” over at ThinkProgress posted this story accusing John McCain of plagiarizing a speech. Had she done a bit of cursory research, she would have found out what many were all too happy to tell her, which is the speech she was accusing McCain of stealing from was actually plagiarized from another speech McCain gave.

Did she learn anything from this exercise? Apparently not, since she posted this story yesterday about how Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) called a solder a ”two-bit security guard”. I guess not only can she not do cursory research, but she can’t bother to watch the YouTube video she posts with the story since nowhere in it does McHenry refer to the security guard in question as a solder. In fact, it seems that McHenry was quite aware that the offending guard was not a solder, but a contractor working security in the Green Zone.

The Weekly Standard called up McHenry’s office (look, it’s that research thing!) and got this statement from McHenry:

It was a poor choice of words to describe the foreign contractor, but anyone who was there knows that I delivered a speech praising the heroism and sacrifice of those who are serving our country in harm’s way.

Basically McHenry admits it was a dick thing to say. I’ll give him that.

The kicker for me on this though is the update Amanda posted on this story:

Michael Goldfarb reports that the “two-bit security guard” was a foreign contractor, not a member of the military, as both Carolina Politics and Lance Sigmon originally reported. As Ed Morrissey states, “Does this really make it any better? After all, the contractors risk their lives as well, albeit for better compensation.”

So your defense for putting your name to a fake story is that you saw a few others put their names to a fake story. That’s how Internet rumors get started, dear.