hoax, schmoax

Defective Yeti has a nice little piece on the (deliberate?) misuse of the word "hoax" by the MSM. I particularly liked this:

The advantages of labeling something like this a hoax are obvious: you didn't massively overreact to a situation that the average person recognized as harmless, you were tricked into doing so! You didn't just take a quotation from a clearly phony article on a random webpage and build a story around in, you were duped! You're not an idiot, you're just easily gulled! (This argument reminds me of the Democrats claiming that they voted in favor of the Iraq war because the White House tricked them into doing so ... not that getting outwitted by Bush is any less embarrassing than getting outwitted by flour.)

It really gets my dander up when I hear Hillary et al trot out that old "they tricked me" chestnut. How come I, sitting at home on my cigarette-burned couch, knew the White House was lying, but people who are supposed to figure these things out for their job were duped? Because they weren't, that's why. "I was too chicken-shit to stand up and call bullshit", it's more like. And you want to be my latex salesman.