Tea bagging leader busted by ABC News for distorting attendance numbers

Yesterday, the teabaggers had their big March on Washington, which officially caused those who participated in legitimate marches on Washington to either roll their eyes or roll in their graves.

And now comes the echo chamber of lies that will be propagated no doubt by Fox News, the phony religious folks at One News Now, and other right wing battle stations.

Such as the claim pushed by Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, the group that organized the event. He said that ABC News reported that 1 million to 1.5 million people were in attendance.

However, ABC News has come out swinging against this claim:

Conservative activists, who organized a march on the U.S. Capitol today in protest of the Obama administration's health care agenda and government spending, erroneously attributed reports on the size of the crowds to ABC News.

Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, the group that organized the event, said on stage at the rally that ABC News was reporting that 1 million to 1.5 million people were in attendance.

At no time did ABC News, or its affiliates, report a number anywhere near as large. ABCNews.com reported an approximate figure of 60,000 to 70,000 protesters, attributed to the Washington, D.C., fire department. In its reports, ABC News Radio described the crowd as "tens of thousands."

Brendan Steinhauser, spokesman for FreedomWorks, said he did not know why Kibbe cited ABC News as a source.

I know why Kibbe cited ABC News as a source for his lie. Because of this:

As a result of Kibbe's erroneous attribution, several bloggers and commenters repeated the misinformation.

Now that these bloggers and commenters know the truth (and I suspect a number of them knew that Kibbe's claim was specious at best) how many of them will:

A. do the right thing and correct what they said about attendance numbers,

B. accuse ABC News of being in on "THE CONSPIRACY to make the country socialist,"

C. entirely ignore the situation over Kibbe's comments.

I wonder how Kibbe would feel if people followed him around screaming "You Lie!" or created t-shirts and bumper sticker with the phrase emblazoned across his picture?

Whatever the case may be, it's a sad commentary for any movement who feels that it has to fight distortions by engaging in a few of its own.