Conservative photo hoax madness

Two or three years ago, the wingnutosphere was at the top of its game, but now it's simply miserable.

The conservative noise machine claimed this week that a banner displayed by an antiwar organization said, "We support the murder of the American troops." Naturally, however, the whole story turned out to be a hoax. The photo showing the banner was a bad photoshop job from a year ago. Nonetheless, a right-wing blog commenter (who is reportedly a member of an organization that beats up parents of fallen soldiers who oppose the war) claims to have seen the banner firsthand - despite the fact that the banner never existed.

Also this week, David Horowitz - of FrontPage infamy, not the 'Fight Back!' guy - made a fool of himself in a similar fashion. Horowitz has invented something he calls "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week." To promote it, he distributed a photo that he claims is of a teenage girl being buried before being stoned to death in Iran. But this photo also turned out to be not what was claimed. The picture was actually of an actress in a 1994 Dutch indie film - not a real stoning.

I know Iran ain't exactly a human rights giant, but hey, if you're gonna post a photo from an indie film made in Holland 13 years ago, why tell people it's a new photo from Iran? That's just about the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. But then again, David Horriblewitz wasn't exactly known for being the most trustworthy guy around.

So just in the past week there's been at least 2 cases of the wingnutosphere distributing photos that they knew weren't real - and getting caught almost immediately. They never learn, do they?

This is just like the time during the invasion of Iraq when the Bush regime took over Iraqi TV and made those ridiculous propaganda broadcasts. The broadcasts purported to be Saddam Hussein telling Iraqis to surrender, but all they consisted of was a photo of Saddam torn from a newspaper, with his lower jaw being crudely moved up and down like in a cartoon. Furthermore, what was claimed to be Saddam's voice was just someone speaking English in a heavy accent. Because most Iraqis didn't speak English, the message's intended audience couldn't even understand it anyway! The only difference between this incident and this week's photo hoaxes is that the U.S. government actually wasted taxpayers' money on this shit!

(Source: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/9/28/153255/584)