Last Friday on his website, Eric Black had a post where he passed along, with an uncritical eye, the blast from Media Matters about its trumped up attack of Rush Limbaugh. Worse, in the second paragraph he referred to Jeff Fecke’s musings on the matter. A bit like Theodosius declaring Alaric an authority on Roman culture.

The post made me raise at least 1.5 eyebrows, for Mr. Black is smart enough not to accept at face value a broadside against Republicans from a partisan outfit like Media Matters.

That the anti-war Left would grasp at such a weak excuse to try and take some attention away from MoveOn’s blunder with its smear of Gen. Petraeus should be a clue they need a telescope to see the moral high ground.

(See Byron York’s article here that put Limbaugh’s remarks in context.)

And indeed, to his credit on Monday Mr. Black posted a mea culpa, of sorts.

This is a foloup (sic) to a post from Friday that I confess I put up without enough thought or fact-checking.
…
For what it’s worth, I think the Media Matters piece would have been better, smarter, fairer and more honest if it had made some reference to the fact that Limbaugh had subsequently brought up the MacBeth case. I agree that a smear is a smear no matter the target, although, as I guess I’ve already confessed, I think that a person who smears others has a higher bar to clear when asking for sympathy if he feels unfairly criticized.
…
(in the comments) Sorry guys, I don’t have a problem with what my esteemed former colleague and blog partner Doug Tice wrote. I did say, in my post, that after listening to the whole segment, plus the Media Matters knockdown and Limbaugh’s rebuttal, it was possible for a fair-minded person to believe that Limbaugh was referring to all anti-war soldiers as phony soldiers, and it was possible to take Limbaugh’s word for it that he was referring to Jesse MacBeth case.

Yes, he tries to poke holes in Limbaugh’s rebuttal, and for that you can compare to what York wrote and decide for yourself.

Mr. Black is too experienced a journalist to carry water for Media Matters, and now that he’s waded out into the blogosphere, this episode should highlight the fact there are creatures swimming around with sharp teeth that don’t play as fair as he does.