The "bogus" blog behind Foley's fall..

[kentuck]

(if this has already been posted, let me know)
http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2006/10/the-bogus-blog-behind-foleys-fall.php

<snip>
ABCNews.com brought Mark Foley's boy-chasing to national attention, but it wasn't the first website to flog the story. That dubious honor belongs to StopSexPredators, a pseudo-vigilante blog filled with plagiarized, hastily-assembled posts, which no one seems to have heard of, visited, or linked to before last week—and whose operator has a suspiciously savvy grasp of the news cycle.

In other words, a blog whose sole raison d'etre seems to have been to get the Foley ball rolling.

<snip>
After running just six posts over the summer, the site picked up steam on September 21 when its author wrote, "the blog has been noticed and some shocking emails have been received!!!!" and posted four emails purportedly from "interns" outraged by the heretofore unmentioned Foley and his penchant for teenage boys.

(Of course, if these emails are legit, it means the "interns" somehow stumbled upon the blog, despite the fact that it had not yet been linked to by any other sites, and was virtually indetectible to Google, which ranks sites according to the number of incoming links.)

<snip>
Three days later, the blogger posted the now infamous "Emails from Congressman Foley to 16 Year Old Page!!!!", claiming they'd been sent in by a reader (despite the fact that they appeared to be scans of faxed printouts). Persons unknown then seeded the link to various political sites—including Wonkette, which initially dismissed them as fakes. ABC, of course, took them more seriously.


edited to add quotation marks around the word "bogus".

[grasswire]

1. excellent detective work

Has anyone seen Buckhead lately?

[wicket]

2. LOL!

:rofl:

[aquart]

3. Who is buckhead?

[Jackpine Radical]

7. Buckhead was the guy who had an insant analysis of

Rather's NG memos. It was Buckhead who first--based on poor copies and astonishingly quickly--made the accusation that they were forgeries. Many think the memos were planted by right-wing operatives & he was primed in advance by Rovesque forces to make his fraud charges as soon as Rather made the memos public, thereby snapping the trap on Rather.

[ClintonTyree]

4. Very interesting.........

(in my best Arte Johnson voice). Now I can't wait to see who this mystery blogger is. Someone will crack it sooner or later, they always do.

[FARAFIELD]

5. Who cares

personally I love it, the only bad part is asswipes like tony perkins and that ilk say assinine things like gay people are preoccupied with sex, Im not gay but I think about sex a lot! anyhoo, doesnt matter who broke it, it still happened and looks like the repukes covered it up or tried. Also THE HILL which is a pretty great source of news said they got it from a GOP Staffer, that cinches it for me. But if these stories keep it in the news then fine talk about it.

[TorchTheWitch]

6. OMG! That's IT!

A fake blog is why the moment the IM's story broke Foley practically ran out of congress directly into the nearest rehab shouting to all the world that he's gay, an alcoholic with behavioral problems, and was sexually asaulted by a priest when in his youth! Imagine what he would have done if he really WAS a guilty pervert! And it fooled the entire government, too! Imagine if OBL made a fake blog!

My God, people are really THIS desperate?

[dailykoff]

8. Good catch.

The unnamed Fox pollster sounds pretty dubious, too.

But that won't stop Charlie Brown from kicking Rove's football again, sigh.