NOTE: The original headline of this post referred to Sullivan working for Time Magazine. Of course, he now works for The Atlantic – something I was aware of but totally forgot when I wrote the post at 3:30 AM this morning.

Gosh. Where are those legions of editors and fact checkers when you need them? (I could have used a few myself judging by the note above, eh? Ed.)

Our own crazy conservative uncle Andrew Sullivan got snookered by a fake web site that reported the “news” that Fox was spinning off their hit TV series 24 into a Saturday morning children’s cartoon that featured Jack Bauer as a young cub scout torturing other kids and “kicking Arab ass.”

Here’s Andrew’s post:

Ann Coulter: set your Tivo. Money quote:

“We spent a lot time doing research on this game,” says Surnow. “Using a sponge, team members must take the water from a filled bucket and squeeze the water from the soaked sponge into an empty bucket. First team to fill the empty bucket wins.” Surnow said he chose the Sponge Bucket Game because it provides opportunities for little Jack to interrogate the little Arabs.

“There’s a great scene before the game starts where little Jack takes an Arab kid named Abdul and sticks his head in the water-filled bucket,” says Surnow. “Jack keeps his head under the water until he drowns. The kid did not give Jack the answers he needed, and for the greater good of the Cub Scouts of America, Jack had to send a strong and clear message.”

That’s a strong “enhanced” message. Just like Mr Tenet says.

The irony in this piece regarding Tenet’s “enhanced message” will probably save Mr. Sullivan total embarrassment as he will more than likely claim he knew it was a joke all along, that you can’t fool him, he’s Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic!

But my friend Taylor Marsh has no such excuse:

But one thing the show never tried to do is appeal to kids, children that is. However, considering Surnow also tried to wingnut the “Daily Show” by offering some lame spin off complete with Rush and Coulter as president and veep, I can’t say I’m shocked that he’d also try to morph “24” for kids. But the idea is creepy. One can only wonder what torture will look like in the new kids version. Abducting their dogs and holding them for ransom or maybe something worse? Mr. Surnow needs a long vacation.

I would think that Mr. Sullivan owes the lovely Ms. Marsh an apology. After all, if The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan puts it on his blog, it must be true, no?

Except Dean Barnett saw through the gag immediately and also offers some thoughts on why Andrew can hardly claim that he knew he was having his leg pulled all along:

[I]n the sidebar of the piece Andrew links to are stories titled, “BASINGER RELEASES OWN LINE OF ANSWERING MACHINES,” “BEAN FARMERS BURNING HUGH GRANT IN EFFIGY,” and “CARSON DALY’S PAID AUDIENCE DEMANDS WAGE INCREASE.”

Did Andrew really not know this was a joke? Is it possible his intellect and sense of humor have been so thoroughly strangled by his oh-so righteous anger? Judging by his post which is completely irony and humor free, the only possible answer is yes. The alternative is that Andrew Sullivan is suddenly joking about torture. For some reason, that strikes me as unlikely.

I knew it was a gag reading “quotes” from series creator Joel Surnow in the story:

“Just because we’ll show Jack as a little kid, doesn’t mean he’s going to stop kicking the ass of all those Arabs he runs into,” says Surnow. “We’re getting our message across to adults that it takes a lot of torture to get the truth from these terrorists, and we believe that children need to see that as well because they’re growing up in an extremely dangerous world.”

I’ve read many articles quoting Surnow and seen him interviewed a dozen times and never, ever heard him talk like that. In fact, I would say that only someone already disposed to believe responsible conservatives like Surnow are perfectly capable of such obscene bigotry could possibly take something like that seriously.

For those who are already down on the right (Marsh is center left. Andrew is…well, Andrew) perhaps this kind of idiocy rings true because they are eager to suspend belief and think the worst of conservatives. This is a mindset that is able to color and spin what conservatives say and twist context and meaning until what emerges as “analysis” bears little resemblance to the original intent of the speaker. Lambchop is an expert at this kind of context assassination. Using a combination of laughably amateurish armchair psychology and a dead serious manipulation of the English language, commentators on the left routinely attack the right in this dishonest manner.

For Mr. Sullivan and his army of fact checkers and editors, however, another explanation might be in order.

Is Andrew really that stupid?

UPDATE

In all fairness, Sully isn’t the only prominent mainstream media organ to have been fooled by this website. A Baltimore TV station breathlessly reported on the Michael Richards story using info from “Dateline: Hollywood” (second item):

A WJZ staffer ripped the story off the Web—without realizing that the source, DatelineHollywood.com, is a purely satirical site, which invented the completely bogus item as a riff on Richards’s real-life racist outburst at an L.A. comedy club last month.

The producer missed some pretty obvious tipoffs—like the line about Richards pouring Aunt Jemima pancake syrup over Goldberg’s head. Also: The links to other “articles,” including “Britney Spears’ Vagina Asks Press for Privacy” and “Rupert Murdoch Found Dead Next to Bloody Glove.”

Yeah…I’d say that link to Spears should have been a dead giveaway. Everyone knows that Britt’s private parts seek out all the publicity that the MSM will grant.