Fake Outrage, Kerry Edition

When this Kerry kerfuffle erupted on Tuesday, I was convinced that the story would be played out in the MSM by the next morning. I was fairly shocked to wake up Wednesday and see the main news channel sites like CNN and MSNBC still featuring the incident as the front-page item. Even the far-right John Derbyshire wasn't convinced there was anything to talk about:

John Kerry is awful, and anything we can do further to degrade his political prospects is worth doing. But really, I saw a clip of him making the much-deplored remark, and it was obvious that the dimwit in Iraq that he referred to was George W. Bush, not the American soldier. It was a dumb joke badly delivered, but his meaning was plain. My pleasure in watching JK squirm is just as great as any other conservative's, but something is owed to honesty. There's a lot of fake outrage going round here.

The funniest examples of fake outrage are the right-wingers who acknowledge that it was a botched joke about Bush and then proceed to say "it's still indicative of Kerry's disdain for the troops." To say the least, Republicans are desperate in the last few days.

I don't know what to say about the fact that at this moment, on Thursday midday, CNN is still leading with the Kerry story. There's your supposed liberal media for you.