I believe the phrase you're looking for here is "selective outrage."

SHRIEK! SHRIEK! SHRIEEEEKKKK!

On the other hand, when Canada's right-wing darling National Post gets caught peddling a bogus story about Iran and Jews and badges, well, they know better than to just tweak a headline. Presto ... nothing up my sleeve.

Honestly, I need more of a challenge here.

BY THE WAY, IT GETS BETTER: It's not just the carefully-chosen, right-wing outrage here that's the story. See, the way it works is, the Toronto Star started things off with this original headline:



which, as most non-imbeciles will recognize, is an obvious hommage to a line that Gerald Ford is given credit for (but probably never actually said). In short, it was actually rather amusing, but only for people who have a clue.

Not surprisingly, that headline was picked up by the aggregator National Newswatch (NNW) and accurately reproduced verbatim:



Unfortunately, by the time certain mentally-defective members of Canada's Bonehead-o-sphere got around to following the links, the Star had changed the online headline to something a bit less acerbic so that the text no longer matched, at which point the aforementioned wankers (apparently unaware that web pages can actually, you know, change) went into Full Metal Wanker Alert and accused NNW of playing fast and loose with journalistic standards:

News aggregator National Newswatch tries to outpinko the Toronto Star.

Yes, that's our very own Neo from "Halls of Massive Dementia", who will not be out-Janked and is all over this discrepancy like Richard Evans on NAMBLA's home page as he decides to take NNW out to the woodshed by e-mail and, for his trouble, gets rapped sharply on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper:

"Wow... how quick people turn on the messenger. That headline was taken directly from the source!!!"

"The TO Star obviously took heat over it and changed it. Since when did NNW start torquing headlines? I have posted a screen shot of the original headline as it appeared in the TO Star when it first went up this AM. The screenshot is from Google News' cache of the story."

"I thought you had more sense than that!"

At this point, jokes involving Neo and having any sense pretty much write themselves, don't they?

P.S. Be sure to read the comments at Neo's place. It's tough to choose between the adjectives "stupid" and "classless," but I'm fairly sure you wouldn't go wrong with either of them.

AFTERSNARK: Canada's "fourth-best blog" weighs in as only the Premature eJankulator can:

And while the Toronto Star is at it, maybe it ought to deliver an apology to National Newswatch. He's been taking a lot of heat for simply repeating the headline the Star subsequently decided was not up to their professional standards.

That's right, Steve -- it's only fair that, if the Star chooses to update its online headline, it should have the courtesy to follow all those backlinks to make sure everyone's OK with that.

Lord, but I live for the day when Steve is put in charge of an actual newspaper. Oh, the hilarity that would ensue.

"GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE." Or is it, "Fools seldom differ." I always get those two confused.