The other night on the Rachael Maddow Show there was a really good segment featuring one Johnathan Henke, co-founding editor of the spiffy looking TheNextRight.com, a conservative opinion website I had never even heard of until viewing the Rachael Maddow Show the other night. Being the host of such a LIEbral show on the DEMONcratic-leaning MSNBC, Maddow started the segment acknowledging that Henke’s appearance on the program was a tad out of place for the network, but despite differences in political opinion and ideology the two had a civil and hilarious discussion about the current state of Wingnuttery in the United States and the sometimes shadowy forces who are hard at work shaping and pushing forward the equally hilarious Wingnut agenda. One force in particular, a “Libertarian” news website which tends to fall on the “batshit insane” side of the political spectrum, was called out during the interview for not only fueling the rabid fever dreams of most Wingnut jobs in the US, but also for continually repeating and repeating the fantastical conspiracy theory that the Obama administration is setting up FEMA internment camps to lock up all the white folks in, or in the words of WorldNetDaily, “…concentration camps for political dissidents, such as occurred in Nazi Germany”.

Henke, as a Conservative and as a well-spoken intellectual and independent thinker (“thinker” is the keyword here), has a problem with WorldNetDaily and presumably other sites of its ilk because they have been incredibly complacent in the “retardization” (my words) of Conservative and Libertarian politics ever since people started flocking to the web for their daily doses of political outrage, government conspiracy, and ads for snarky bumper stickers. WND caters to a whole host of wacky wackjobs, the fluoride mind-control crowd, the black helicopter NWO brigade, Amero stockpilers, and until very recently the Deathers, Birthers, and  Tea-Baggers. WorldNetDaily publishes “breaking news” that caters to these crowds so frequently, in fact, you can gauge the credibility of a website just by looking to see if they link to WND content or not. FreeRepublic.com, InfoWars.com, PrisonPlanet.com, even Stormfront.org all love the warm, mind-numbing, pulse-quickening drivel that World Net Daily churns out on a regular basis.

But who is behind WorldNetDaily? Even with a website like The Drudge Report the creator and editor-in-chief is brave and straightforward enough to include his own name the title of the website. Turns out that WorldNetDaily is the brainchild of Joseph Farah, a one-time newspaper editor and conservative columnist, whose likes have been featured in The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Sun-Times, and Wall Street Journal, and one-time contender for Most Obnoxious Facial Hair on the Planet (US Division, Mens). Farah has had a fair share of criticism levied against him throughout the years, mostly for being an inept editor who is the laughing stock of legitimate journalists everywhere and a MASSIVE hypocrite when it comes to any issue of freedom of speech or press (you know, those issues that real journalists care about and fight to uphold). That is why when Johnathan Henke calls for a boycott of WorldNetDaily’s web advertisers Mr. Farah felt the need to address his critics directly (and by directly I mean barely not at all).

Geraldo ain't got nuthin' on this

Being the ever vigilant selfless journalist he is, Farah issued a response to Henke’s criticism of WorldNetDaily, an odd stream of consciousness editorial that can really only be described as a grown baby’s pissing fit over some meanie individual insulting his favorite toy:

Indeed, WND’s journalistic coups have been systematically ignored by our colleagues

for the last 12 years.

And we fully expect George Soros front organizations like Media Matters to wage jihad against WND. After all, organizations like that believe the news media are too skeptical of Big Government. I have always believed a truly free and independent press can never be skeptical enough of Big Government.

So, for 12 years, whether the White House was occupied by Republicans or Democrats and no matter who was running the show in Congress, WND has consistently been a watchdog on government. This is what we do. This is what we have always done. This is what we will continue to do no matter from which direction the brickbats fly.

Lately, many of the brickbats have come from bloggers who call themselves “conservatives.”

Now, much of the criticism of WND over the last 12 years has been motivated by jealousy. I’ve always recognized that. Some of these people just can’t understand why their blogs aren’t as big and influential – even among their target constituency – as WND is.

George Soros *wahh* *wahh* jihad against WND *wahh* *wahh* motivated by jealousy *wahh* *wahh* these people can’t understand why their blogs aren’t as big and influential *wahh* *wahh*. Oh an also what’s a brickbat? That’s some seriously antiquated whining right there. Instead of approaching the real issue in his editorial however, the fact that people want to boycott WorldNetDaily and its advertisers because WorldNetDaily furthers the unthinking if-you-should-loudly-you-are-right political mentality out there, Farah would rather sit there and stroke his long, thick, lustrous ego and defer that his website fights the good fight against “Big Government”. It’s ironic too how such a seasoned veteran journalist like Farah can’t seem to distinguish what actual journalism, research, or reporting is:

Why they worry that associating with me and WND might tarnish their club, I can’t understand. There’s a movement right now to try to get the Republican Party to stop advertising on WND. Interestingly, the Obama campaign was a bigger advertiser on WND in 2008 than was the John McCain campaign. And the Republican Party has never been a significant advertiser.

It’s all crazy.

Meanwhile, my colleagues in the news media are having a field day with the story of those attacking WND. They interview all kinds of experts on the subject, but don’t bother to ask me about it.

Watch Rachel Maddow at MSNBC for a classic example of this kind of “journalistic responsibility” in action.

Even when WND is the story, no one asks us to respond or debate.

…Unlike Maddow’s “reporting,” WND’s is actually having an impact. It’s actually drawing an audience. It’s actually appreciated by a growing number of Americans who are sick and tired of media and government and political experts telling them how to think.

Yeah, it’s not “reporting” or “journalistic responsibility” when a journalist files a report about your organization, shining a not so positive light on it, then calling on a legitimate source to further explain why your website sucks and how you’ve contributed to a systematic dumbing down of any Conservative argument out there by going bey0nd the bounds of logic and sanity into Wingnut territory, “reporting” on unfounded conspiracy claims like they were real news items of public interest. Oh yeah, but you went to college and got a Journalism degree, Joesph Farah, so you must know that deep down what your doing doesn’t represent the profession at all.

Are you sure that wasn’t a degree in Advertising you got because it’s the only thing your website seems to do half-decently. We all know a real journalist would stop and question whether it’s a good idea to insert advertisements for books, DVDs, and other schlock in between articles and content, not labeling them as such with the expectation that users will click on ads for “Obama Antichrist predictions” and “holistic colon cleansings” because you know your readers are crazy like that. So much for “journalistic responsibility”, Farah. But really, where is it my position to question any of this? Farah must be rolling in dough from the click-throughs for survival products and Cash4Gold adverts as well as sales of bumper stickers, coffee mugs, and mouse pads all baring the WND logo.

Still, I can sleep soundly at night though knowing Joseph Farah has no legitimate counter argument for any of this. Like most of his kind he’s in it for the money, a fact that’s hilariously and clearly indicated by his craptacular website’s design and Farah’s nervous scrambling when a pundit calls on people to boycott WND’s advertisers. Being a journalist however, I’m sure at some point Farah’s respect for truth will surface and he’ll come out against himself, bragging that his last 12 years with World Net Daily have all been a farce and a social experiment to see just how far an individual can push the bounds of decency and teeshirt sales. Right?

For more Joseph Farah related idiocy please visit the following links:

Joseph Farah’s Twitter

Right Wing Watch – Joseph Farah

Media Matters.org – Joseph Farah