Anatomy of another smear.

I'm reading Edward Feser's "The Last Superstition" which reminds us that back in 2004 the secular left was touting itself as the "reality-based community."  It never was, and this last week, once again, proves it.

It was surely a sign of wish-fulfillment that led prominent media lefties to leap to the conclusion that the Times Square bombing attempt was probably an act by a right-winger, rather than by an Islamic extremist, which, after all,  has actually tended to be the motivation behind terrorist attacks in New York against civilian targets.

For example, New York mayor Bloomberg offered this to Katie Couric:

Less than 24 hours after the failed car bomb attack, CBS anchor Katie Couric asked Mayor Bloomberg about possible suspects.

Bloomberg: "If I had to guess 25 cents, this would be exactly that. Somebody..."

Couric: "A home grown?"

Bloomberg: "A home grown, maybe a mentally deranged person or somebody with a political agenda [who] doesn't like the healthcare bill or something -- it could be anything."

MSNBC's Contessa Brewer shows the same wish-fulfillment dream-state.



Bob Beckel on Foxnews did his best to plant the "rightwing" meme:

All right. The latest developments. We saw what happened, and we're all watching this -- this car bomber in New York. And it seems to me that we really dodged a bullet here. I mean, it seemed very close. The thing is smoking. Got all the materials in there.


We're now determined tonight that the person that they have, a person of interest, is a naturalized American citizen, returned to the country after spending several months in Pakistan. Is it -- is it too early to reed into that?

BOB BECKEL, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: No, I still think the jury is out on this. I think it could be a right-wing militiaman involved in this. I mean, you never know.

TONY BLANKLEY, COLUMNIST, NEW YORK TIMES: Obviously, one doesn't know.

HANNITY: Why are you smirking over there?

BECKEL: I'm just saying how do we know it's a Muslim?

HANNITY: Well, it could be a Unabomber, right?

BECKEL: We don't believe in guns, so we don't have a militia.

HANNITY: Well, the Unabomber-type.

BLANKLEY: Look, albeit the pattern we see play out over and over again. Most of the time, the danger comes from radical Islam misses. And most of the time the media tries to avoid that fact.

Now, in any individual case, we have to wait for all the facts to come in. But the instinct of the media is simply to say it's not true and try to find something else.

HANNITY: But Sherlock Napolitano, Ms. Man-Caused Disaster, actually made the statement, which I found -- this has the potential of being. It might be terror-related, you think? Might be, maybe, come on!

Blankley is right that we should wait for information. It could well have been a "rightwing militiaman."  Nonetheless, a number of prominent members of the leftwing media didn't "wait for information."  They apparently wanted it to be someone who could be linked with a conservative position and they did their level best to plant that innuendo right from the start.