Two Vile Conservatives: Todd Akin and Niall Ferguson

As a result of Todd Akin’s vile comment on rape, which has received bipartisan criticism, Niall Ferguson’s cover article for Newsweek was not the most disgusting and factually incorrect item to come out of the gutters of the far right wing this weekend. Ferguson’s anti-Obama piece was full of all the typical falsehoods we regularly hear from Fox, Newsmax, or in a Mitt Romney stump speech.

While I was busy working (in a business which I created but which would not be possible without the infrastructure which I did not build) multiple people have already debunked Ferguson’s article, so there is no need for me to increase my blood pressure by going thru the article again. Among those who have debunked Ferguson (and indirectly the main right wing lines of attack against Barack Obama) are James Fallows, Dylan Byers, Matthew O’Brien, Paul Krugman, Noah Smith, Ezra Klein, Joe Coscarelli, and Steve Benen.

The obvious distortion of the facts in Ferguson’s article raises the question as to why editors at Newsweek didn’t do some fact-checking before putting this on their cover. The answer is that Newsweek doesn’t bother with fact-checking:  “We, like other news organizations today, rely on our writers to submit factually accurate material,” Newsweek spokesman Andrew Kirk told POLITICO. That’s like expecting Mitt Romney to say factually accurate material when campaigning.

I’m now waiting to see if and when Todd Akin drops out of the Missouri Senate race and Newsweek fires Niall Ferguson.