It's Opening Day for much of major league baseball, and so it seems entirely appropriate that Breitbart.com and Fox "News" managed to get pwned without anybody even trying to do it. For those who aren't baseball fans (baseball fans are all too well aware of it), the once-proud Baltimore Orioles franchise is entering what will almost certainly be its 15th consecutive losing season (and I say that, even though I'm an Orioles fan). The consensus among Orioles fans is that the team's troubles, which have continued through multiple managers, general managers, and other personnel, are the fault of the current owner, and that there is really no hope until he sells the team.
On April 1, a prominent Oriole fans site called the Orioles Hangout published a story, prominently dated "April 01" that claimed a group headed by Billy Ripken (Cal Ripken's less famous younger brother who also played in the majors for several years), Keith Olbermann, Harold Reynolds, billionaire tycoon (and Republican Party donor) C. Dean Metropoulos, and the Topps Company were putting together a group to buy the Orioles. Just to make sure that nobody with half a brain missed the fact that this was a joke, the article even ended with "Happy April."
The Orioles Hangout staff, however, didn't quite bargain for the gross stupidity of right-wing "news" sources. Breibart.com apparently didn't notice the April 1 date or the "Happy April" ending, and ran with this as a real news story, mixing it with the obligatory outrage about how unfair it is that Keith Olbermann might be able to buy part ownership of a baseball team when there were objections to Rush Limbaugh possibly being part of a group to buy the NFL Rams. They even ended their story with the following:
NOTE: We haven't found any other confirmation of this other than the above-referenced link. If it's a late April Fool's joke, well, his Current TV firing was funnier.
My response to them is, "Hey idiots, it was published on April 1, and you actually link to the story that is dated April 1! The fact that you didn't read it on April 1 doesn't make it late, but you not recognizing it for an April Fools joke definitely makes you stupid!"
Predictably, Breitbart's followers got themseves into a tizzy about the unfairness of life and the disparate treatment of Olbermann and Limbaugh. And also predictably, nary a one of them managed to notice that the only source Breibart cited for this story was in fact an April Fools joke.
And then Fox "News," on its Fox Nation site, picks up the Breibart.com story and also runs it as actual news. And also predictably, not one of the people who commented on the story apparently had any idea that the entire thing started out as an obvious April Fools joke.
I think this entire episode provides a real insight into the reliability of right-wing "news" sources and the intelligence of most of the people who rely on them for their "news" -- (most of the people who rely on them, but I've got to admit, not all of them, since when one righty breathlessly reported this news on a different Orioles fan site, another righty immediately recognized it for the April Fools joke that it was).
Happy Opening Day, everybody!