The Patient Capital Of Crazy

This is Warner Todd Huston.  The one on the left.

Longtime readers will be somewhat familiar with his work from posts I have occasionally done over the years like "Big Red Todd and the Monsters".

Mr. Huston's oeuvre is repackaging wingnut talking points and pooping them out like little paving stones on the road to Hell. And at this job he is very persistent. He just chugs along, rain or shine, diligently reprocessing the bottom of the RWNJ birdcage into content for a variety of Conservative sites you have known and been alternately amused and repulsed by during your sojourn through these here internets:

Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com,  StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDailyReview.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany's Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.

Huston has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. Huston's work has appeared on Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Neil Bortz, and Michael Savage. He has appeared on the G. Gordon Liddy show, many times on Chicago's WGN 720AM, and dozens of local shows from coast to coast, and many blogtalk radio shows.

Mr. Huston has appeared on local TV news to discuss his writing, has been a guest on Fox Business Network, CNN's blogger lunch, and has appeared on Breitbart TV's B-Team show.

Warner is also the editor of the Midwest Editor for RedCounty.com and has a blog on the Tribune-Owned ChicagoNow.com website. He is a well known writer on Illinois politics.

He has also written for Liberty Ink Magazine, several history magazines and appears in the book "Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture"which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Mr. Huston's work has also appeared in several College Textbooks...

Keep that in mind.

Well, yesterday Ol' Warner got kinda famous outside of the precincts that corner of Crazytown where he plies his trade.  You see, the cult Warner works for spends half its time shrieking about President Obama being the antichrist because of whatever he did yesterday, and the other half of its time all twitchy and amped and hair-trigger ready to go absolutely apeshit over whatever President Obama does tomorrow.  And it literally no longer matters what the President actually does or does not do -- whatever he has for breakfast tomorrow, that thing will be spell the Death of Freedumb and Our Glorious Republic unless we act to defeat this tyrant now!now!now!

Rinse and repeat.
Forever and ever.
You know the drill.

Well, as a professional spreader of conspiracies and amplifier of  bullshit, Warner sorta forgot that he's not actually very bright or capable of distinguishing between the scent of Chanel No. 5 and his own refried Limbaugh farts.  And what with all the copying and pasting and bitching and keening, he kinda got way out over his skis and fucked massively up.  And that fuckup sailed right through the wingnutosphere like ebola through a human centipede before anyone bothered to notice that is was indeed a fuckup.

Which is how got all over the Liberal side of the internet, starting with TPM and spreading outward through the radio, through Esquire and onto the MSNBC teevee machine:

Breitbart Issues Best Correction Since Forever

I generally don't like harping on other outlets' errors or the always mortifying process of issuing a correction. It's a mix of 'there but for the grace of God' and, in this case, look at the source. But I think here we may have perhaps the best 'correction' in the long storied history of 'corrections', especially ones stemming from errors no remotely careful journalist ever would have made in the first place.
As noted a bit earlier, on Saturday Breitbart published an exclusive pointing out that President Obama's Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch was part of the team that defended President Clinton during the Whitewater investigation - not a bad little scooplet. Only it wasn't the same Loretta Lynch, which kind of takes the punch out of the story.
Breitbart then issued a 'correction'. But like I said, it's a correction for the ages.

As you can see, the headline and the entire article is intact, replete with various references to Lynch's time in the early 90s defending the Clintons. There's a little "[Corrected]" tacked on to the headline, even though the headline stays the same. And that's it.
Until you get all the way down to the bottom of the piece.

The best I can say in defense of this comical 'correction' is that it would be challenging to amend the piece in light of the categorical collapse of the article's central assertion. I mean, how do you correct it? I guess you just don't? Which is pretty much what they did here.

But here's the thing.  If I had to bet the rent money, I would bet that this won't harm Ol' Warner's career one little bit.  Sure, he'll get banged around by the Liberal Media for a day or two, but all that means is a promotion from dreckslinger to full-on Conservative Martyr (3rd Class).

And that is the point.

One of the main reasons obviously insane Conservatives win at election time is that they are willing to invest in and cultivate third-tier ideological button men like Ol' Warner.  Willing to invest in their movement's communication infrastructure and and human capital -- materially supporting them, patiently, year after year after year -- until even a plodding goof like Ol' Warner has a steady audience and a resume that would look pretty impressive if you had no fucking idea what you were looking at.

On the Left, there is nothing like this.  Nor are there any plans to develop anything like this anytime soon.

And that is a big part of why we lose.