Cincinnati Enquirer columnist Peter Bronson has an item posted on his blog at Cincinnati.com that rips into Minnesota Sen. Al Franken and generally uses the same old tired schtick of mocking him as Stuart Smalley.
That's getting real old, but the First Amendment protects assholes too. And if that's the sort of thing that keeps the right wing in America off the streets, then God bless them.
But at the end of the post Bronson has a picture of Franken in an adult diaper and clutching a stuffed bunny. Sort of looks like something Franken might have done in a Saturday Night Live skit. Except that it's a fake photo.
The doctored photo was revealed by TPM (edit: Think Progress) in this story.
The use of the fake by the Cincinnati columnist was revealed by a blog called The Cincinnati Beacon. The blogger, The Dean of Cincinnati, wrote a letter requesting a retraction:
Dear Mr. Bronson,
I am writing to inform you that your recent blog item, “Minnesota - the joke is on you,” includes information that has been thoroughly debunked in 2006—and interestingly the information was debunked by Jon Craig on the Politics Extra blog. I would like to request formally, therefore, a correction and an apology on your blog for misleading your readers.
What is especially sad is that the same doctored photo was revealed to be a fake in a post on another political blog in 2006 at Cincinnati.com. The post includes this:
Andy Barr, director of Al Franken's Midwest Values Political Action Committee, said, "The picture is a fake. . . Both the photograph and the quote are particularly hacky works of pure fiction. No wonder Sherrod's up by so much" in recent public-opinion polls.