[Yes, the essay is about how idiotic several gaggles of rightbots looked by embracing a Breitbat "story" - which started out as a joke and morpohed into rightbot "truth" - about Chuck Hagel's ties to the nonexistent "Friends of Hamas." The piece is written by a conservative with rock-solid ideological credentials: David Frum.]

Unfortunately, it was not only a single website that pounced. The story quickly traveled up the Internet food chain. It was repeated at NationalReview.com, and from there made the leap to talk radio and Fox News -- repeated, to be sure, usually with caveat words such as "allegedly," but repeated all the same.

That was week 1. In week 2, the story deflated as fast as it spread, collapsing from hoax into joke. "Friends of Hamas" now has become an internal media meme for an outlandish accusation hurled by reckless and irresponsible people.

The author of the original Feb. 7 story, Ben Shapiro, continues to insist that his report was accurate. All he'd written, he said, was that "sources' had told him about Friends of Hamas. Okay, maybe it was only one single "source." Still -- it had told him so! And he'd posted what that source had said. What else was he supposed to do? Check? That would be so lamestream.