Since I’m spending a while in Franceland, I’m not following news too closely. The only bit of French news I’ve caught so far was theirr on-screen headline for the first day of the flooding in England: “Eau My God!”

The one story I’ve found interesting enough to follow online is the Scott Thomas affair. The best comment defending Thomas so far has to be today’s post from the One True Conservative™:

Well, I trawled through the various knuckle-dragging websites and there’s still no actual, you know, evidence that he fabricated anything. Maybe he did. First-person war-stories are always hard to verify beyond a shadow of a doubt, no? But if Malkin can’t dredge up something and fling it by now, no one can. Unhinged bigot Ace tries dredging through others’ private lives again. When in doubt, aim for the girlfriend.

Notice what just happened? He’s placing an affirmative burden of proof on critics of the piece. It’s not up to The New Republic to fact check its pieces and be prepared to offer some evidence to back up some pretty outlandish claims; rather it’s up to Michelle Malkin to affirmatively disprove those claims.

He calls Michelle Malkin a “knuckle-dragger,” Ace of Spades an “unhinged bigot,” but has nothing negative to say about someone who at best can be called an extraordinarily insensitive human being. All Malkin and Ace ever did was to believe that American soldiers were incapable of wearing children’s skulls as crowns, and to ask for evidence regarding some rather incredible stories. Sullivan now hates the right-wing blogosphere more than he loves truth. It’s a sad state of affairs for someone who contributed so much creating the blogosphere; I’m sure a Greek could write a play about this.

Posted by Apollo in Journalism, What Ever Happened to Andrew Sullivan?