The Sludge Factor

By now, everyone and his brother knows that Britain's Prince Harry has been removed from his duty post in Afghanistan for safety reasons following the exposure of his location on the right-wing "Drudge Report" smear blog. Nicely played, Sludge, he of the pseudo- 1940's private eye hat. Sadly, unlike much of the junk on the "Drudge Report," this proved to be correct. Looks like he's the one that "hates the troops."

The typical feeding cycle for the media seems to be: wingers leak "information" or just plain crap to Sludge, it's breathlessly posted on his blog, and the mainstream media runs with it as if it's sourced and reliable. After all, as Time's Mark Halperin famously said, "Drudge rules our world."

Too bad we can't stuff this inauthentic creep into a uniform, ship him off to Iraq or Afghanistan, and let him see what his recklessness produces.

Drudge Sludge

Jon Swift has a thorough wrap up of the controversy sparked by unnamed sources claiming the CNN correspondent Michael Ware "heckled" Sen. "St." John McCain in his recent Baghdad new conference. The "sources" fed wingnut gossipmonger Matt "I Gossip, You Swallow" Drudge, who faithfully spread the report without fact checking it. Keep in mind that Mr. Sludge hasn't been to Baghdad, hasn't even broken suction on his chair in years, and is calling out a reporter who's been in a war zone for roughly four years.

Un-for-tu-nate-ly, video evidence of the press conference shows that Ware didn't even speak, much less heckle. Uh oh. Well, guess this means a retraction from Mr. Sludge, right?

**crickets chirping ** **crickets chirping **

Riiiight.