Melinda Henneberger

Melinda Henneberger, on a somewhat too-pat story that NYT writer Frank Bruni related (admittedly, secondhand) about an abortion doctor telling him that one of his protesters (a woman on a ladder, apparently) took time out to go have an abortion at the doctor’s clinic:

After Bruni’s column appeared, several conservative writers, a Catholic news site and Gawker — together again, for the very first time — questioned whether there was any such woman, given that a number of suspiciously similar versions of the lady-on-the-ladder tale have been reported before, in a bunch of different places.

[snip of almost-but-not-quite confrontation of the possible fabrication head-on]

I don’t bring any of this up to challenge the ethics or motives behind the column written by Bruni, a talented former colleague and complete professional; no way would he have piped the thing.

Continue reading #rsrh Melinda Henneberger not ready to face the idea that Frank Bruni is capable of lying.

[UPDATE] Welcome, Hot Air readers. Also: nice job scoring the interview, Ed.

Full disclosure: Mark Impomeni, who had been previously fired from AOL, is a RedState colleague. Caleb Howe, who no longer writes for AOL, is a RedState colleague. I have previously banned Tommy Christopher from RedState – and now follow him on Twitter and have linked to him when appropriate, because that banning was strictly business, nothing personal. I used to buy Playboy when I was much younger, but only for the pictures of naked women. I used to use AOL, back when you got charged for the amount of time that you spent online.

I think that covers it.

So, to review: a misogynistic writer for Playboy’s website wrote a column (screenshot here) listing the top ten conservative women who he’d like to rape*. The conservative blogosphere, not expecting this sort of story to start appearing before, say, October of 2011, reacted with a snarl; joined in by several liberal members of the blogosphere. Then one of the liberal critics (Tommy Christopher) got fired by AOL. Meanwhile, Playboy pulled the article…

Yes, a liberal blogger for AOL got fired, right after he published a swiftly-removed criticism of the Playboy piece. Continue reading Newsbusters: AOL is lying about the Playboy Rape List firing.