"People shouldn't say it appeared when it didn't."--- Paul Bass concerning the inappropriately cited Joe Lieberman "quote" ("Homosexuality is wrong.") attributed to the  New Haven Advocate.

In yesterday's HARTFORD COURANT Paul Bass has an extensive column about what a duplicitous turd Lieberman is. He didn't bring up the quote but he still seems to feel that Lieberman has been bad on gay issues.

"The Bush administration values Joe Lieberman because he has been a crucial ally in efforts to free Enron-style corporate crooks from regulation, transfer wealth to the wealthy, hound gays, trample on the rights of government critics and sacrifice the lives of thousands of Americans and Iraqis to dishonest, dangerous military adventurism."

I doubt Doug Ireland made the whole thing up. It sounds more like Lieberman said it to Bass and Bass passed it on to Ireland but never printed it in the NEW HAVEN ADVOCATE. One certainly doesn't need that particular quote to make the case that Lieberman is not a friend of gay men and women. He himself recently-- now that's he's being called on the carpet for activities unbecoming a Democrat--  admitted he was wrong to have teamed up with Jesse Helms to legislate homophobia in schools.

All future comments in MY diary about Joe Lieberman STILL possibly being a fag-hater will be hidden.  I agree that Joe Lieberman MAY be a fag-hater.  I agree that Joe Lieberman may believe in his heart of hearts that being gay is wrong.  Please do not write 17 paragraphs about Joe Lieberman's anti-gayness, or I will choose to delete your comment because I don't want to hear it any more.  Yes, Joe Lieberman may not like gay people. I agree with that, and that particular discussion will not perputate in this diary. It is MY diary, and I'll delete those comments, and all of your troubles will be for naught.  However, the QUOTE attributed to Joe Lieberman... "Homosexuality is wrong" in the New Haven Advocate is inappropriate, because it never appeared there.  That is my only point.  Transparency. If the quote didn't appear, it didn't appear... period, no matter what Lieberman "believes".

Leaving all other elements aside for the moment, and just concentrating on the did the quote appear in the Advocate? issue, there's surely something of an inconstistency.

The first we get is Matt blazing away (via FDL) with the 2003 LA Weekly piece. Then he emails the scribe who says he got a dossier of Advocate pieces from Paul Bass in which he found the quote. (But the piece with the quote has gone AWOL.)

Then Bass emails you to say

I didn't see that quote in the Advocate.

And does he mean that, while he didn't see it in the Advocate, he did see it elsewhere?

Let's pass that for the moment.

The upshot would seem to be that the statement in the LA Weekly piece is false.

Presumably, if the publishers were to fail, on being so informed, to take it down from the site or amend it, they would be liable for damages for defamation under the Sullivan rule.

Plus - it would, if the Weekly truly is, as Matt alleged a respectable paper, be damaging to its reputation to have a defamatory statement about a leading national politician on its site.

To close to my bedtime to tease it out. But, somehow, this fails to pass the smell test.