I agree (and disagree) with you both. Pat, I think the guy was weaselly and was *trying* to imply that he heard it, but since he couldn’t actually say that he heard it, I never believed he knew jack about it, so I disagree with you and Allah there, and yeah, Xrlq, I believe he was trying hard to make people believe he heard it, so that given that, it wasn’t as huge a leap as you make it when people actually believed he was implying he heard it.

I’m over the sycophant thing … this new post I can work with, as it’s a lot more rational than the tone at the beginning of this thing.

1) Says he “knows” it’s true that Allen said it; and

2) Says it’s a “fact” that Allen said it; and

3) Says he is only saying about the N-word; he’s not saying about other incidents; he wasn’t there for those incidents;

is implying he was there for Allen’s use of the N-word.

And yes, Anwyn. Allah is my favorite blogger.

Why, he’s my HERO! Even if he said many clearly wrong things, I would nevertheless support him, due to blind hero-worship.

I’m just that big of an idiot.

Xrlq: at its extremest end, your argument sounds as though you are blaming Allah for others’ inability to tell the difference between fact and his opinion.

I don’t blame Allah for others’ inability to do anything. I do, however, blame Allah for failing to handle the rumor better after the fact. Even if his post were 100% accurate, which it’s not, it’s gone a long way toward helping to “prove” a point that is simply false. That alone is reason enough for a clarifying update. I know I’d do that, if anyone used one of my posts to prove something that doesn’t follow from it, and which appeared to be getting any real traction in the blogosphere. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for Allah, or anyone else with an audience nearly as large as his, to do the same.

Besides, it’s not as though Allah made one itty-bitty boo-boo, and others took it to completely new and unforeseeable places. Start with the truth, which is that Sabato made it clear he believed Allen had said the N-word, but flatly refused to say whether he had or had not heard him say the word himself. Add Allah’s spin, and suddenly Sabato is strongly implying the very thing he explicitly refused to say. That’s a big leap. From there, it takes a relatively small leap to infer that Sabato intended to imply this (as you yourself seem to be suggesting), and a smaller one still to have him openly stating what Allah has him implying.

Indeed, if I thought there were any real substance to the claim Sabato had deliberately misled anyone on this point, or that he had been “caught” in this alleged deceipt by anything other than his own statements in a subsequent interview, then I’d have left the whole issue alone. Any moral distinction between lying outright and deliberately deceiving people with half-truths is a finer distinction than I care to focus on here. The problem is much more basic than that: there’s no evidence that Sabato did either.

Actually, I think Pat and I are pretty well agreed that Allah is likely the best of the lot among *all* bloggers. I can’t speak for Patterico as to specifics, but Allah’s in my top five.

I feel like I’m losing the thread here, so I’ll try a small summation. P and I initially got started because you attacked all of Hot Air (read: Allah), first of all based on a post by Ian and second of all because of a misstatement by Allah that he has so far refused to retract or mitigate. He maintained, in Pat’s comments, that it sounded to him like Sabato heard Allen use the word himself. I disagree and disagreed at the time, but never considered it a big enough deal to make an issue of–my thought is pretty much “Allah thought it sounded this way, and I didn’t,” and in addition, Sabato **clearly wished to give that impression,** stopping short of saying “Yes, I heard him say it” presumably only because it could be disproven, which it later was. Your beef is that Allah was outright wrong but others took him as gospel.

Given that I’ve stated the case correctly, I don’t know how much is to be gained by continuing to go around about it. If Allah admitted it was a false factual step without a correction, you might have a case for their emphasis on speed over accuracy, but his “testimony,” so to speak, is that it was an honest mistake *of opinion only* that he still stands by as warranted by the video and not warranting a correction. If Allah now believed his initial opinion was unwarranted, there might be a case against people having taken that opinion and run with it, but here’s the thing, Xrlq: at its extremest end, your argument sounds as though you are blaming Allah for others’ inability to tell the difference between fact and his opinion. I can’t go along with that.