In a post criticizing CNN for criticizing bloggers for making things up, our hero makes things up. No, we are not making this up.

Today our hero takes to the ramparts in defense of all bloggingkind against the evil Behemoth, CNN. In the wake of the Andrew Breitbart/Shirley Sherrod/United States Department of Agriculture kerfuffle (henceforth "Andrew Breitbart/Shirley Sherrod/United States Department of Agriculture-gate"*) there has quite obviously been a bit of fingerpointing.

Naturally, one of CNN's brightest lights, Kyra Phillips, has chosen to weigh in on this one, directing her fire at all Internetkind as well as firing a broadside at "anonymous bloggers." (We here at Ydiot are still smarting over that one.) And yes, she is probably meandering off point to criticize anonymous bloggers when Andrew Breitbart (if that IS his real name!) is not, in fact, anonymous (and according to Matt, not a blogger, and probably also not a true Scotsman). Then again, with hours and hours of ultra-low-budget cable air time to fill, there's bound to be some off-topic babbling.

Where were we? Oh yes. The making stuff up bit. Some block quoting:

Naturally, the stars at CNN think the moral here is that bloggers should be sent to jail:

“There are so many great things that the internet does and has to offer, but at the same time, Kyra, as you know, there is this dark side,” Roberts said. “Imagine what would have happened if we hadn’t taken a look at what happened with Shirley Sherrod and plumbed the depths further and found out that what had been posted on the internet was not in fact reflective of what she said.”

But Phillips replied that the mainstream media “can’t always do that.”

“There’s going to have be a point in time where these people have to be held accountable,” Phillips said. “How about all these bloggers that blog anonymously? They say rotten things about people and they’re actually given credibility, which is crazy. They’re a bunch of cowards, they’re just people seeking attention.”

Note that there is nothing in that block quote suggesting anyone at CNN thinks lying bloggers (like Matt!) should be sent to jail. Elsewhere (not appearing in this block quote) Phillips does mention "legal sanction," but legal sanction and jailtime are not synonymous. No one is claiming that Matt should be sent to jail for lying and claiming that someone said that Matt should be sent to jail, at least not at CNN. At least not that we could find. Of course, it IS possible someone at CNN said something to the effect that lying bloggers should be jailed. We here at Ydiot don't believe that to be the case. We do, however, think that introducing a block quote with a statement unsupported by the quoted text should be punishable by death.

*We believe "The Vilsacking" should be held in reserve in case Tom Vilsack himself ever gets fired.