Fake news, the worst story EVER

Before you read on, take whatever antidote you use for ptomaine poisoning. Really. Please.

Cameron Harris, a recent college graduate, pulled six million people into his bogus story about the discovery of fraudulent ballots for Hillary Clinton.

Source: From Headline to Photograph, a Fake News Masterpiece – The New York Times

Sensitive to your incipient nausea, I’ve pulled a mere few excerpts from this story about Cameron Harris, a utterly soulless creature, a definitive deplorable. My hope: he winds up unemployed forever, homeless and diseased. Probability: he’ll get a job in Trump’s administration.

Let’s give Scott Shane a standing ovation for this example of factual investigative reporting at the highest level. Mr. Shane and this piece must be models for all print media after the Horror takes over tomorrow and threatens to dispense with all creditable news coverage in favor of people like this little monster.

A picture of him:

 

Excerpts from the story:

“I had a theory when I sat down to write [the piece of fake news he composed out of whole cloth],” recalled Mr. Harris, a 23-year-old former college quarterback and fraternity leader. “Given the severe distrust of the media among Trump supporters, anything that parroted Trump’s talking points people would click. Trump was saying ‘rigged election, rigged election.’ People were predisposed to believe Hillary Clinton could not win except by cheating.”

In a raucous election year defined by made-up stories, Mr. Harris was a home-grown, self-taught practitioner, a boutique operator with no ties to Russian spy agencies or Macedonian fabrication factories. As Mr. Trump takes office this week, the beneficiary of at least a modest electoral boost from a flood of fakery, Mr. Harris and his ersatz-news website, ChristianTimesNewspaper.com, make for an illuminating tale.

Contacted by a reporter who had discovered an electronic clue that revealed his secret authorship of ChristianTimesNewspaper.com, he was wary at first, chagrined to be unmasked.

“This topic is rather sensitive,” Mr. Harris said, noting that he was trying to build a political consulting business and needed to protect his reputation. [My comment: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKK!!!!!!!!!]

The money, not the politics, was the point, he insisted. He had graduated from Davidson College in North Carolina in May, and he needed to pay his living expenses. “I spent the money on student loans, car payments and rent,” he said.

By the time he launched his fraudulent story on ballot fraud, he had found minimal success with “Hillary Clinton Blames Racism for Cincinnati Gorilla’s Death,” a reference to the sad tale of Harambe, the gorilla shot after he grabbed a little boy visiting the zoo. He had done better with “Early Morning Explosion in DC Allegedly Leaves Yet Another DNC Staffer Dead,” spinning off conspiracy theories around the earlier shooting death of a Democratic National Committee staff member.

By his account, though he voted for Mr. Trump, his early preference had been for Senator Marco Rubio. Mr. Harris said he would have been willing to promote Mrs. Clinton and smear Mr. Trump had those tactics been lucrative. But as other seekers of clicks discovered, Mr. Trump’s supporters were far more fervent than Mrs. Clinton’s.

He had put a pop-up on the site inviting visitors to “join the ‘Stop the Steal’ team to find out HOW Hillary plans to steal the election and what YOU can do to stop her!” and collected 24,000 email addresses. He has not yet decided what to do with them, he said.

Asked whether he felt any guilt at having spread lies about a presidential candidate, Mr. Harris grew thoughtful. But he took refuge in the notion that politics is by its nature replete with exaggerations, half-truths and outright whoppers, so he was hardly adding much to the sum total.

“Hardly anything a campaign or a candidate says is completely true,” he said.

My vote for the Most Amoral Little Shit of the year: Cameron Harris. And he had a ton of competition.

The biggest problem, though, remains the same: why does anyone believe this crap and vote based on it? How can we have such a low-information electorate for this guy to make money off?

And how many of the six million dimwitted people who read the fake story switched their votes to Trump?

Both stomach and heart are sickened.

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