I HAVE AN EXCUSE FOR MY BULLSHIT -- YOU BELIEVED IT!

Followers of Anti-Hillary Clinton Bullshit from She Killed Vince Foster to She Can't Stand Upright will have noticed the particularly dumb recent bit in which Clinton was alleged to have announced at a rally that she would raise taxes on the middle class.  This makes no sense at all, politically, but hungry propagandists will eat whatever slop you put in front of them and wingnut factota like Robert Kraychik ("Presumably a slip of the tongue, Clinton’s comment came amid broader Marxist-themed demagoguery...") made a feast of it.

Still, you never like to think everyone's a shitheel, and I was a little disappointed with National Review's Deroy Murdock, who put up a column last week called "Hillary: Time to Raise Middle-Class Taxes!" ("So, as of now, Clinton is on record as advocating tax hikes on America’s middle class"). But today I noticed that it has been replaced with an Editor's Note regretting the error. Good man, Deroy! thought I.

Alas, this is from Murdock's follow-up:

Numerous news outlets and opinion mongers, including me, flogged Clinton for targeting middle-income Americans for further economic abuse.

However, PolitiFact subjected the Democrat nominee’s words to forensic scrutiny worthy of the Watergate tapes.

Tscha! Like it was something important.

...This particular story was wrong. However, as the campus Left might say, it nonetheless highlighted a broader truth.

If Clinton reportedly had said, “I plan to dismantle Roe v. Wade,” everyone would know instantly that this was either fake news, or Clinton had a much bigger problem, namely a complete and total short circuit inside her head. 

An eventually inoperative story about Clinton’s envisioning a middle-class tax hike endured for days because she, her running mate, and the man she hopes to succeed all have advocated or enacted middle-class tax hikes — even as America is mired in the economic doldrums.

Old-timers will know what I mean when I say Murdock finds the story "fake but accurate." For the rest of you, I will just point out that his defense is that lies about the most vilified woman in American politics are no big deal because she's the most vilified woman in American politics. (Blaming it on "the campus Left" is the equivalent of throwing the gun when you've run out of bullets.)

This is offered just in case you were thinking of letting your guard down, whether out of fatigue or from some misguided notion of fair play. Snap out of it!

UPDATE. Speaking of bullshit --

Next week, it'll be "Me personally, I don't believe in chemtrails, but I heard it from Alex Jones and he's famous!"