DRUDGE RETRANSMITS MURDOCH'S JIHAD PORN; MURDOCH EDITOR IS SHOCKED, SHOCKED

Oh, I'm just so happy to have the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy back in full force, aren't you? But this time, the conspirators are going to do everything delicately. Observe:

As you may know, for the past month or so, sleazemongers have been insinuating that Hillary Clinton is having a lesbian affair with her aide Huma Abedin, who is of Indian and Pakistani descent and once lived in Saudi Arabia. Recently, Rupert Murdoch apparently decided the rumor wasn't circulating widely enough -- but it seems he didn't want to do anything blatant or tacky to help spread it around. So The Times, his "quality" paper in England, slipped the rumor into a story ostensibly about the sleaziness of South Carolina politics. That's high-minded, right? The Times isn't spreading gossip, it's merrely reporting on its existence.

Oh, er, yeah, the story was illustrated with a huge picture of Mrs. Clinton and Abedin. But that's not rumor-mongering, is it?

One might have expected the usual right-wing bank shot -- a report of a rumor about another Democrat accompanied by innuendo blaming the rumor on Hillary, the result being a smear of two candidates. But this rumor is about Hillary, so that couldn't happen -- right?

(Keep reading for the final answer to that question.)

That was Thursday. And then -- what do you know! -- Matt Drudge picked up on the Murdoch story and turned it into one of his news flashes, discarding the window-dressing about South Carolina and other campaign rumors, and homing in on Clinton and Abedin. Oh, and he helpfully waited until yesterday to do this, so that people who were busy celebrating and shopping for most of the weekend wouldn't miss the story again. All thoughtfulness, that Matt.

And now the D.C. bureau chief of The Times, Tom Baldwin, is shocked, shocked, at the way the story's been received:

My colleague, Tim Reid, travelled down to South Carolina last week where he soon found himself up to his ankles in what he described as the "foulest swamp of electoral dirty tricks in America".

Tim wrote about some of the smears and inuendendos already floating by in the Palmetto state. His second paragraph reported allegations being spread about Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Barack Obama, Fred Thompson and, oh yes, Hillary Clinton.

...It was duly picked up on Thursday by the Drudge Report - which has a taste for this sort of stuff - and that, we thought, was that.

Then yesterday, Drudge decides to lead with:

DON'T GO THERE: BRIT PAPER STARTS 'UGLIEST MONTH' ...

Now, I said that even these guys couldn't blame a nasty rumor about Hillary on Hillary. Turns out I was wrong. Here's more from the high-minded Mr. Baldwin, who, unlike that nasty Matt Drudge, doesn't have "a taste for this sort of stuff":

...So, what's going on?

Has a "Hillary confidante" contacted Drudge to draw attention to this five-day old report? Quite possibly. The New York Times recently reported that her campaign had opened up a direct channel of communication to the mysterious Mr Drudge.

Why would a "Hillary confidante" do such a thing? It could, I suppose, be to provide cover for other alleged activities at Camp Clinton.

Last week the conservative columnist Bob Novak claimed that the Clinton campaign had scandalous information about Obama - but that Clinton had ruled out releasing it.... The Clinton campaign said it knew nothing about it. But this weekend Novak stood by his claim....

Alternatively, the Drudge story may serve the purpose of underscoring Hillary's current theme about how rivals are "throwing mud" which is backed by a new advertisement focusing on the attacks being launched on her by Republicans.

There is, indeed, a lot of this about. On November 7, Ken Silverstein, the Washington Editor for Harper's Magazine, blogged under the headline: "Not Just Republicans Spreading Rumors About Hillary’s Lesbian Affair".

But The Times of London is not "kicking off the ugliest month" - if that is what the next few weeks will be - we are merely reporting it.

Well, thank you for maintaining your standards, Tom. For a minute there, I could have sworn you were slinging mud, too. Silly me!

*****

And then we enter the right-wing twilight zone, courtesy of Hugh Fitzgerald at Rober Spencer's Jihad Watch site, who insinuates that Abedin may be both Clinton's lesbian lover and a believer in sharia law, as presposterous as that would be. Oh, and a believer in killing infidels as well:

Now that the rumors about Hillary and her aide have hit the Times of London, Hillary will feel she cannot abandon her protege. She instead is likely to become indignant, more determined to be seen, defiantly, with Huma Abedin on every occasion and to attack those who express the slightest, perfectly justified reservations about the perfectly plausible notion that Mrs. Clinton gets her idea of Islam, or of what Islam might be, necessarily skewed, from someone apparently full of personal charm and good looks (never to be discounted, often dangerously employed)....

Of course one is perfectly justified in worrying about this kind of influence. For if the reports are to be believed, Huma Abedin remains, despite living in the West, a "deeply conservative" Muslim. We are entitled to assume, therefore, that she still regards the Qur'an as the uncreated and immutable Word of God. And we are entitled to consult that "Word of God" to find out what she believes. And that includes 9.5, and 9.29, and another hundred deeply disturbing and hate-filled verses. We are entitled to assume that she is familiar with the most "authentic" Hadith in the most authoritative collections. We are entitled to assume that she regards Muhammad as exemplary, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil, and that therefore she finds all of his behavior not only beyond criticism, but to be taken as a model: little Aisha, and the murders of Asma bint Marwan and Abu Afak, the decapitation of the 600-900 bound prisoners of the Banu Qurayza, the attack on the inoffensive Jewish farmers of the Khaybar Oasis, and so on.

Is this close aide, this aide-de-camp, who may or may not be closer and more intimate with Hillary Clinton than anyone else on earth, really a deep admirer of that Muhammad? Is she a deep believer in the Qur'an, and therefore a supporter of the Shari'a, desirous naturally of removing all barriers to the spread of the faith of which she is not only an adherent by birth (born into it through no fault of her own), but apparently by conviction? She is, furthermore, the daughter of a Muslim preacher who went to Saudi Arabia, the place where the most rigorous and unmediated Islam is put into practice, and enforced at every level.

We have a right to know. And Huma Abedin, and her great and good friend, have a duty to tell us....

And the business of lesbianism need not be brought into the discussion at all. That is not the main thing. That this "deeply conservative" Muslim is her constant companion and aide is enough for alarms to go off. That is more than enough....

So there you go -- Abedin may be having a lesbian affair with a Methodist American who voted for the resolution that led to the Iraq War (and the one that may lead to an Iran war) even though she believes in sharia law and killing infidels.

Yeah, that makes sense.

The goal of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy isn't merely to win -- it's to make the public feel that any Democrat who might attain real power is someone no decent person should associate with, someone we should cross the street to avoid, someone whose intentions and goals are dangerous -- if not unspeakable. That's the message being spread right now about Hillary Clinton in these linked communications. She is a lesbian agent of terror. Her vagina will get us all killed.

*****

By the way, does anyone still think Rupert Murdoch cozied up to Hillary Clinton a while back because he sincerely wants her to win?