DO I SMELL RABBLE-ROUSING DISINFORMATION?

The sexual assault of CBS's Lara Logan in Egypt is being widely reported, but, as far as I know, only the Murdoch press is telling us this:

"60 Minutes" correspondent Lara Logan was repeatedly sexually assaulted by thugs yelling, "Jew! Jew!" as she covered the chaotic fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo's main square Friday, CBS and sources said yesterday....

A network source told The Post that her attackers were screaming, "Jew! Jew!" during the assault....

"A network source"? Really? Who -- Roger Ailes? (Note that we're not told what network.)

The story, from the New York Post, does accurately report that Logan told an Esquire reporter that she and her crew "were accused of being Israeli spies" after they were detained by the Egyptian army a few days before the sexual assault, when Hosni Mubarak was still in power. But that's different from an angry, violent mob yelling "Jew! Jew!"

Am I denying that there's anti-Semitism in Egypt? No. I'm just saying that there's something suspicious about this conveniently vivid detail, so easy to grasp and retransmit (it's already all over the Internet), a detail that's extremely useful if you're selling the line that evil liberals are aiding and abetting those who seek a second and even more successful Holocaust.

It reminds me of the immediate aftermath of the Tucson shootings, when a (subsequently debunked) rumor began to be spread by -- wouldn't you know it? -- Fox News that Jared Loughner had ties to the anti-Semitic group American Renaissance.

As I wrote at the time:

Why would Fox do this? I mean, wouldn't you expect that, if anything, Fox would engage in misdirection in order to try to persuade its fans that Jared Loughner was a lefty?

Well, see, in the wingnuttosphere, a racist, neo-Nazi group like American Renaissance is lefty, by definition. Also see the multiple declarations by bloggers and others on the right that Loughner's decision to list Mein Kampf as one of his favorite books on his YouTube page is evidence that he's left-wing.

This crackpot notion derives, of course, from Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism. It's now an article of faith on the right, and doesn't even have to be explained to true disciples of the movement.

Of course, it's much easier to make a case like this when dealing with foreigners, because everyone on the right "knows" that evil liberals, from Jimmy Carter on down, hate Israel and Jews and actively root for anti-Semites worldwide simply because they're anti-Semites.

I could be wrong, but my guess is that the story of the chanting will be debunked, or just disappear from the narrative because it's never corroborated. But on the right it will become gospel truth regardless.