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Thursday, September 16, 2010

Is It Too Much To Ask That People Read The Wikipedia Entry To Which They Link?

I expect it from TPM, which is peddling an overblown tape of Christine O'Donnell questioning -- in 1996 -- whether there had been a fair investigation of Vince Foster's 1993 death.  TPM tries to make a big deal out of this, but as even Matthew Yglesias points out, many mainstream publications were questioning the circumstances of Foster's death in the mid-1990s.

But Doug Mataconis at Outside The Beltway does TPM one better by suggesting -- based on a Wikipedia entry on the Foster death -- that the issue of Foster's death had been "thoroughly investigated and unanimously ruled to be suicide by official sources" and that "unless Delaware turns out to be a previously unknown having of conspiracy theory addicts, I doubt [O'Donnell's tape] will go over well."

Well sure, but the link to the investigation in Mataconis' post recites that the official Starr report on the investigation was released in 1997, after the tape of O'Donnell.

Whether one accepts that Foster committed suicide or not, to use a 1997 investigation report on the Foster death to prove that O'Donnell was a conspiracy theorist in 1996 is really shoddy.

Update: Robert Stacy McCain has a good post on how the tape does not even prove what TPM (and Mataconis) claim, and pointing out some real "O'Donnell" conspiracy theories.
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10 comments:

  1. Mataconis has a beef about O'Donnell, an irrational beef if his own words are anything to go by.

    ReplyDelete
  2. And the Starr report indicates that the Park Police and Fiske Investigations were completed in 1993 and 1994 respectively.

    By the time Ken Starr got to this, the only people who still believed that Vince Foster didn't commit suicide were the same conspiracy loons who believed in black helicopters and Bill Clinton's involvement in drug running out of an airport in Mena, Arkansas

    ReplyDelete
  3. @Doug - so I guess Starr also was a conspiracy theorist because he was still investigating the death notwithstanding the park police report - but you probably would agree with that. The fact is that the Starr report was the definitive report on the investigation, and was launched precisely because there were unanswered questions.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I earlier left two comments along the same lines, one on MattY's post and one at TPM. And, I tweeted a couple tweets about this. I don't know why, since I consider teapartiers brainless scum (to be frank). Call it the COD exception. However, I'll tell you one thing: this post isn't going to have any long-term impact on those discussed and it actually helps the bad guys (or at least one group that I consider bad and that Jacobson obviously isn't hip to yet.)

    ReplyDelete
  5. hmmmm, part of the notorious C.B.C.
    that is, Clinton Body Count.
    73 and counting?
    Bill Shelton is my favorite "suicide" CBC victim. he shot himself in the back of the head.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Mataconis is the reason I had to stop reading OTB. Dude's just a hack.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Mataconis is a liberal pretending to be a conservative. I stopped reading OTB, as well.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Interesting that the Google ad at the top of Outside The Beltway is all about stopping O'Donnell, Scott Brown, and the TEA Party. Since it is automated, kind of tells you what the content of the site has become.

    ReplyDelete
  9. So because I'm not in the Christine O'Donnell Amen Corner I'm a liberal ?

    Yea, that makes sense guys.

    ReplyDelete
  10. First of all, I am an outsider. Am I convinced that O'Donnell is a good choice candidate? No... it is a toss up to me... I am looking and keeping an open mind.

    Second, in regard to Vince Foster's death, I belong to the group who believes that it was murder and not suicide. Why? Simple reason: there were eye-witnesses, not to the death itself, but to the fact that a person or persons unknown were also at the spot at the time that Vince Foster died. It is all about the car. The whole story is fascinating....

    ReplyDelete