Could Ezra Levant be any more misleading or disingenuous? Answer: No.

Numerous people have opined that, when your entire business model is based on rage and angering your audience, you can't just offer up the same level of rage day after day; no, rage is a drug and, after a while, you get used to it, so it's necessary to keep increasing the rage factor to keep the grift going. Simply put, in order to keep your audience, you need to continue cranking up the rage factor relentlessly; every article, every video, every email has to turn the screws a bit more. And when it comes to reporting on the same story month after month, well, every time you report, you need to embellish a bit more, you need to exaggerate a bit more, or you need to just invent new aspects of the story that weren't there before.

So here's Ezra, reporting on the ubiquitous "Pastor Artur," whose story grows in the telling every time Ezra tells it, and by way of cranking up that rage factor, here's Ezra's latest embellishment:

Good Lord ... prosecutors are demanding that Pastor Artur "renounce his faith?" Really?

Of course not. Don't be stupid.

Absolutely no one is insisting that Pastor Artur turn his back on Christianity, or whatever obscene, bastardized version of it he preaches, but we need more rage, so suddenly -- out of absolutely nowhere -- here's Ezra tossing out a rather significant claim that, oddly, he's never felt the need to mention before.

How curious.

What's amusing is that this is not the first time Ezra has used precisely that wild fabrication, as your humble scribe documented in some detail well over a decade ago.

It is amusing, is it not, how Ezra can't even come up with original material. What is just as amusing is, if you read the comments on that recent article where Ezra makes that claim, not one commenter -- not a single one -- has the intellectual capacity to say, "Um, I don't remember that part. Are you sure about that?"

That's because they're all too busy being outraged. That's how it works.