There has been so much news lately of how much of a “valuable news source” Matt Drudge is. Let’s look at this “valuable” information. Here’s two headlines appearing at the top of his page right now:

The original story from Esquire is here. Interesting enough, when you read it you will notice how it is tagged:

Notice that last tag? It says ‘humor’. In other words, this piece was a satire piece. Now this story has been up on Drudge for less than 2 hours (3:30pm est), but look at what was added to the article 3 hours before that:

UPDATE, 12:25 p.m., for those who didn’t figure it out yet, and the many on Twitter for whom it took a while: We committed satire this morning to point out the problems with selling and marketing a book that has had its core premise and reason to exist gutted by the news cycle, several weeks in advance of publication. Are its author and publisher chastened? Well, no. They double down, and accuse the President of the United States of perpetrating a fraud on the world by having released a forged birth certificate. Not because this claim is in any way based on reality, but to hold their terribly gullible audience captive to their lies, and to sell books. This is despicable, and deserves only ridicule. That’s why we committed satire in the matter of the Corsi book. Hell, even the president has a sense of humor about it all. Some more serious reporting from us on this whole “birther” phenomenon here, here, and here.

There’s a big paragraph stating the obvious – that this article was satire. Of course that doesn’t stop Drudge from pushing it as some actual story.

And this is how the crapspiracies, like birtherism, becomes a mainstream media story. Drudge doesn’t read what he links. The right wing blogs don’t bother reading it. Instead they all push some satire or unvetted story as fact.

Now what is fact is the second link. Wingnut conspiracy theorist extraordinaire, Jospeh Farah, is actually threatening to sue Esquire Magazine. The last I checked, satire was exempt from lawsuit and I always thought the right was so against these type of lawsuits as well. I wonder what Farah would say if every victim of one of their smear campaigns started suing them. We would hear cries about “freedom of speech” and “tort reform”. People like Farah believe only they deserve the right to sue someone.

Hey maybe Esquire should sue Matt Drudge for pushing this story as fact instead of satire? Now that would be a sweet irony.