Since lefty blogger Ian Murphy prank called Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker on Wednesday, various media outlets have devoted significant coverage to the prankster. None have seen fit to mention some of Murphy's more colorful antics - proclaiming "f**k the troops," for instance, or pretending to be autistic to gain access for a story.
CNN has been out front covering the prank and its perpetrator. The channel named Murphy its "most intriguing person of the day" in one segment, and devoted an article on its website to Murphy's wild claims - that Walker is "delusional," as CNN's headline blared, and that market economics amounts to a "fairy tale."
In reaching out to Murphy for comment, however, CNN did not see fit to ask him - or even mention in its multiple stories about the prank - that he is not just a "liberal website editor," but is in fact a radical, foaming-at-the-mouth leftist whose work includes fantasies about killing prominent Republicans and other far-left memes popular during the Bush years.
For a taste of Murphy's style, observe this excerpt of a 2008 article in the Buffalo Beast headlined "F**k the Troops":
So, 4000 rubes are dead. Cry me the Tigris. Another 30,000 have been seriously wounded. Boo f**king hoo. They got what they asked for—and cool robotic limbs, too…
The nearly two-thirds of us who know this war is bull***t need to stop sucking off the troops. They get enough action raping female soldiers and sodomizing Iraqi detainees. The political left is intent on “supporting” the troops by bringing them home, which is a good thing. But after rightly denouncing the administration’s lies and condemning this awful war, relatively sensible pundits—like Keith Olbermann—turn around and lovingly praise the soldiers’ brave service to the country. Why?
You get the idea.
Many of Murphy's writings perfectly channeled the attitude of the frantic anti-war left during the Bush years. "If Rove is Bush’s brain," he wrote in another article, "may the 43rd president be lobotomized before we string him up."
But don't worry, Murphy has at least a few qualms with murdering elected officials. "Do I often fantasize of jamming a rusty shiv into the Vice President’s eye socket and twirling it around until he passes out from shock and slowly bleeds to death? Of course," he wrote in 2007. "Would I do it? No. This author does not torture." He does, however, engage in some pretty sick homicidal fantasies.
Give these excerpts, you will probably be slightly less surprised - if thoroughly disgusted - to learn that Murphy has posed as a sufferer of Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism, in order to gain access to an event he admits he otherwise would not have been able to attend. So the man is shameless, and an unethical journalist.
Yet despite all this, no news outlet that has covered Murphy and his latest antic have bothered looking into his history of absurd and highly-offensive statements and actions. And CNN was not the only one. MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell brought Murphy on air for a 5-minute interview segment. O'Donnell simply labeled him "the editor of Buffalo Beast and the most important phone caller of the day."
Plenty of other media outlets mentioned Murphy, of course, but all either neglected to sift through his work for the Buffalo Beast, or declined to mention it in their reports.
The left, of course, went gaga over the prank call, and the mainstream press was not about to spoil the fun.
