So, it is with little suprise that we find that they are continuing the William Ayres / Obama "connection" non-story:
Critics noted over the weekend that President Obama's page on the free online encyclopedia had been edited to remove any mention of his links to former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers, and to allow only a brief citation of his connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright — though pages for Ayers and Wright are heavily peppered with references to the president, including subsections on both pages that detail their past affiliations with him.
The restart on this was triggered by WorldNetDaily ( you know, that same place where Jerome Corsi touted all his Obama nonsense ) writer Aaron Klein:
A perusal through Obama's current Wikipedia entry finds a heavily guarded, mostly glowing biography about the U.S. president. Some of Obama's most controversial past affiliations, including with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and former Weathermen terrorist Bill Ayers, are not once mentioned, even though those associations received much news media attention and served as dominant themes during the presidential elections last year.
Also completely lacking is any mention of the well-publicized concerns surrounding Obama's eligibility to serve as commander-in-chief.
The last sentence was an obvious reference to the lunatic-fringers that insist that Obama was not born in the US and can't be President.
As I was reading through the Fox story and the WND piece, I came across this article by Kevin Poulsen @ Wired.
He talks about The Fox story and the WND piece, but goes a step further and notes that the person that edited Obama's page to add the "juicy tidbits" was a user named Jerusalem21.
Poulsen goes on to note:
Curiously, it turns out that Jerusalem21, whoever he or she might be, has only worked on one other Wikipedia entry since the account was created, notes ConWebWatch. That's Aaron Klein's entry, which Jerusalem21 created in 2006, and has edited 37 times.
Klein, who serves as WND's Jerusalem bureau chief, did not immediate respond to an e-mail Monday.
Doesn't really take a rocket scientist to figure this one out.
Poulsen tried to contact Klein about this "exclusive" piece and wasn't immediately contacted back. Also, he seemed to realize the Wired and Poulsen were onto him and he changed the text of the story
Update: March 10, 2009 | 1:40:00 PM
This morning the WorldNetDaily story, which is headlined "Wikipedia scrubs Obama eligibility," was scrubbed clean of the name Jerusalem21, who's now referred to only as "one Wikipedia user." Fortunately, Google cache never forgets.
Second update: March 10, 2009 | 7:20:00 PM
Aaron Klein has answered my e-mail. Klein says that there's an "undeniable trend" of Ayers and Wright references being scrubbed from Obama's entry — as he wrote in his article. But he now admits that he's responsible for the Jerusalem21 edits that he reported on, and says he's updated his WorldNetDaily story to reflect that.
While Klein's pathetic attempt to resurrect the notion that Obama, Ayres, and Wright are somehow interconneted on such a level is more than just laughable, it is also a signifier that the conservative media at large are willing to modify history in order to fit their tilited ideology.
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