Truthout Marketing Ploy

I usually don't like to blog JPod because of his frequent lapses of decorum and truthiness, but since I suffer from the same dual disabilities, I think his NRO piece on the bat-guano crazy Mike Ash, purveyor of Jayson Blair Leopold's inventive journalism, and his blog truthnot's continuance of the story that Karl Rove is under Double-Secret Indictment by Patrick Fitzgerald [Dean Wurmer in the Animal House original].

JPod's reminiscences about the ability of righty wack-jobs to project Clinton's obvious corruption onto wild and crazy schemes like the CIA drug airport in Mena, ARK, are appropriate. JPod then speculates:

To be honest, I don't think Marc Ash, the editor of Truthout, actually believes what he wrote. I think he's got a marketing crisis on his hands. Truthout's website puts it this way: "The growth and success of TO can be linked directly to the support our readers have shown for the project. As many of you may know, TO is 100% reader supported. We have no corporate sponsors, no advertising, and no pop-ups. This news source depends upon its readers for its survival. Sure that can be annoying, and at times intrusive, but it's better, because we answer to you." I suspect that Truthout's aggressive "reporting" on Plamegate was a major moneymaker for Ash's operation, and Ash knows full well that a retraction of it would place the future of his website in jeopardy.

Fitzgerald won't be closing up shop for at least a year, and Ash can keep hope alive on a daily basis — and keep the money flowing from the sorts of people who will swallow almost any kind of flim flam as long as it reinforces their ideological hatreds. A lot of people on the Right made money off the Mena stuff (and other anti-Clinton stuff) in the '90s from angry nuts with checkbooks, and it's easier today with a credit card and a website like Truthout.

It seems to be a cliched truth that absence from power equates with absence from responsible commentary on the fringes of the outed party in the penalty box. Perhaps the sublunary nitwittery on the farthest left-field bleachers of the lefty blogpark stems from this and some of these wackos, like Mark Cuban who has just hired wacko-in-chief Dan Rather, have serious cash to throw at their hallucinations.