Ah, the "intelligentsia" of the Right-Wing Noise Machine pipes up in full, deafening screech, and then doesn't even bother to say, "Never mind"

What? Condoms? At Princeton? Damn liberals!

Sometimes I almost feel sorry for the sad clowns who pass for an "intelligentsia" of the New Right. After all, are the mere 24 hours allotted by each day enough to crowd in the proper amount worth of lies, stupidification, obfuscation, and general pollution of the human spirit?

Today's cautionary tale is told by Max Blumenthal on The Nation's website. It's the story of a loony-right Princeton student, one Francisco Nava, "a sad young person with a history of self-injuring behavior," who perpetrated a preposterous hoax, claiming to have been not only widely reviled and wickedly threatened but actually beaten up for his outspoken right-wing-itude--in this case denouncing the university's shocking championing of condom usage! Damn liberals!

Once the case landed in the laps of the local gendarmerie, the cops seem to have figured out in a matter of minutes, if not seconds, that the kid had made the whole thing up, that his injuries were all self-inflicted, that the whole thing was pure bullshit. But by that time, from all over the land the heavy hitters of what passes for right-wing "intelligence" had piped up in full, deafening screech to denounce the liberal Sodom of New Jersey.

Movement icons from Robby George of Princeton to Harvey Mansfield of Harvard, from David Horowitz to Brit Hume, raised howls of persecution when they heard reports that two masked men allegedly attacked a conservative Princeton University student. They insisted that the right-wing acolyte was beaten up "for his conservative views," as Horowitz put it. And they accused Princeton of failing to protect conservatives and upholding a hypocritical liberal double standard.

From the outset all the signs of fabrication were there, Max notes. Naturally, though, when the hoax finally unraveled, the right-wing noise machinists couldn't run for cover fast enough:

When Nava was exposed as a fabricator, his defenders disappeared almost as quickly as they had mobilized. Rather than issue a correction or update, Horowitz scrubbed all accounts of the bogus attack from his website. Fox's Brit Hume, meanwhile, has yet to amend his terse online report of student apathy toward Nava.

Robby George, who had been quick to condemn the university, now praised Princeton for its measured response to the Nava affair. "Princeton, all the way from the administrators down, had the good sense to hold their fire, get the facts first, before drawing conclusions," he told the Princetonian.

George also congratulated himself for his own calmness in the crisis and sharp-wittedness in uncovering the fraud. "Within seventy-two hours," he said, "we were able to expose this as a hoax."

But of course, Nava's claims were never "exposed" by George or his conservative campus allies. Nava had reportedly confessed to his lying under police questioning. Only hours before George celebrated the "good sense" he and university administrators displayed, he had accused Princeton of upholding a liberal double standard. And while Princeton police investigated dubious details of the alleged assault, George broadcast his confidence in Nava's melodramatic account.

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