Latest Right Wing Excuse For Their Contemptible Racism: Unsubstantiated Claims That The Murderer Has An "Orbital Blowout Fracture of the Eye Socket"

Does this guy look like a racist to you?

I have to admit, I had never heard of Republican blogger Jim Hoft-- better known as "Gateway Pundit"-- until Media Matters dubbed him the Dumbest Man on the Internet. In 2010 they pointed out that his unique incompetence had been responsible for "almost every inane story that bubbles up in the conservative blogosphere."

"[E]ither willfully dishonest or staggeringly inept," Hoft "has proven that he has absolutely no vetting process for the sources he cites, and apparently has a hard time with basic reading comprehension." And, no one should be surprised that he's been at it again in regard to the tragedy in Ferguson. His latest clain even seeped into the DWT comment section. Republican KKK types want to believe the kind of wild stories Hoft propagates and this is the kind of thing that spreads from him to Drudge to Limbaugh to Fox to brothers-in-law and water coolers across the country. Charles Johnson, a former rightist who knows exactly how they operate, debunked Hoft's widely trumpeted "reporting." He was immediately suspicious about Hoft's anonymous sources for a struggle between murderer Darren Wilson and the unarmed 18 year old he pumped 6 bullets into.

Before being hustled out of town, Wilson had none of the symptoms of the orbital blowout fracture right-wingers are now claiming. "Also," notes Johnson, "no ambulance was called for Wilson, and no first aid was administered by other officers, which seems odd if he had indeed suffered this type of serious injury-- or any injury at all."

And there’s more evidence that Hoft is trying to pull a fast one again; here is the original image posted at the AAPOS site, showing a CT scan of a blowout fracture (on the left), compared to the image posted at Gateway Pundit by Hoft (on the right):

Notice the difference? In the version posted by Jim Hoft, the text at bottom right that says “UNIV OF IOWA” has been crudely erased. Caught you, Jim.

Was Hoft trying to mislead his readers into thinking this was the actual X-ray (or CT scan) of Darren Wilson? His text does not make it clear it wasn’t Wilson’s CT scan-- and the words “UNIV OF IOWA” have been blacked out, quite deliberately.

If Hoft’s intent was to mislead, it worked. All over Twitter and right wing blogs, the wingnuts are raving about “Darren Wilson’s X-ray” that shows a fractured eye socket-- but this is just a generic example image of an unknown person’s CT scan.

Time will tell if Wilson is going to claim he had this type of injury, but nobody should take Jim Hoft’s word for it.

And one more point while I’m at it; Hoft writes:

This comes from a source within the Prosecuting Attorney’s office and confirmed by the St. Louis County Police.

If that’s true, it’s highly disturbing that the St. Louis prosecutor’s office and the St. Louis County police department are leaking information to a far right hateblogger known for his unrelenting dishonesty, who uses a white supremacist hate group as a source.

Even other right-wing bloggers are questioning Hoft's veracity-- or at least his ability to get the story right.

Ferguson Republican Party meet-up