I'm surprised at Dave Weigel (a guy I usually respect, who's a Contributing Editor of Reason Magazine -- to which I am a loyal subscriber).

Surprised and annoyed, and I'll explain why.

After citing Glenn Reynolds' link to a Gateway Pundit story linking a WorldNetDaily report, Weigel says this in an update to a story titled "Editing Libel Out of Wikipedia = Vandalism":

See, here's why I post about this stuff. Two hours after my write-up, Instapundit links Gateway Pundit with the headline "Still airbrushing Obama's Wikipedia page." And thus, a false story from a conspiracy web site gets promoted by a mainstream author and law professor.

And why would he also link Weigel's criticism of the post he did link? Why does only the former link constitute "promoting"?

I need to know, for I clicked on both links. Does this mean Glenn promotes contradictory posts, or is some hidden mechanism at work, known only to a few? Might this be a form of "passive aggressive" "promotion"? Should someone ask Andrew Sullivan?

FWIW, I don't think Glenn promoted any conspiracy theory at all, much less the one from WorldNetDaily of which Weigel complains. Like Weigel I am deeply distrustful of the site, and as regular readers know I have criticized WND in this blog on countless occasions (as I did yesterday). But I do try to be careful before I say things that aren't true. Yes, even about WorldNetDaily. And I don't think it's fair to impute something that WND says to someone who didn't say it.

I'll start with the partial quote from Gateway Pundit on which Weigel bases his accusations:

Communist tyrany (sic) Joseph Stalin routinely air-brushed his enemies out of photographs.

Wikipedia airbrushes any controversial information about Dear Leader from its webpage including his 20 year relationship with mentor Jeremiah Wright and his long relationship with terrorist Bill Ayers.

The Ayers comment is a lie: Wikipedia maintains a comprehensive page on the Ayers-Obama relationship.

Wikipedia scrubs Obama's entry clean of any critical information that may taint your view of Dear Leader.

So that makes it abundantly clear the Gateway Pundit statement that Weigel characterizes as a lie -- that Wikipedia "airbrushes any controversial information about Dear Leader from its webpage" (my emphasis) is substantially true, but more importantly, that Gateway Pundit was talking about the Obama entry page!

What's up with the partial quote, anyway? If he's going to accuse someone of lying, can't Weigel do better than Dowdify the quote he's using as "evidence"? I think that under the circumstances, editing out the previous sentence is pretty darned crass, and a lot of people would say it borders on outright demagoguery. Which is why I said I was surprised.

I mean, really. If you're going to accuse people of lying about airbrushing, shouldn't you be careful not to airbrush out something that goes to the heart of what they actually said about airbrushing?

This is in no way a defense of WorldNetDaily's misleading article, which can certainly be read as implying that the entirety of Wikipedia allows no mention of Ayers-Obama, or Wright-Obama, or the Obama birth certificate claims. In fact Wikipedia does have entries discussing these things.

But Gateway Pundit never lied and said it didn't. Nor did Glenn Reynolds, who said,

STILL AIRBRUSHING Obama's Wikipedia page.

I'm not seeing promotion. Not even passive aggressive promotion.

But I might be wrong. If linking does constitute "promotion," then I'd like to know why Glenn (by linking Weigel) is promoting the airbrushing of the airbrushing!

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post.

Except now I'm confused. Considering that he has linked this post, isn't he now promoting the promoting of the promoting?

A warm welcome to all!