Breitbart.com Confuses Attorney General Nominee Loretta Lynch with Country Star Loretta Lynn

Left, Attorney General nominee with Pres. Obama; right: country star Loretta Lynn
Left, Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch with Pres. Obama; right: country star Loretta Lynn

In the world of the late racist provocateur Andrew Breitbart, facts did not matter. As spreaders of lies and smears targeting liberals and progressive organizations, Breitbart, along with his federally convicted Mini-Me, James O’Keefe, deserve a great deal of credit for poisoning the well of American politics.

The beauty part about operating in a fact-free world is that fact-checking does not matter, either. In that regard, Breitbart may be dead but his spirit lives at his website, which continues to publish the same sort of right-wing smears, lies and provocations that comprises Breitbart’s legacy.

The mistake published by Breitbart.com this week, however, was a real doozy: In a story criticizing Pres. Obama’s choice for attorney general, the editors confused Obama’s nominee, Loretta Lynch, the 55-year-old U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, with 82-year-old country star Loretta Lynn.

Given that fact-checking is not a thing in the fact-free right-wing media universe, the mistake is understandable The names are very similar.

In its first story on the nomination, Breitbart.com made the ridiculous assertion that Loretta Lynn served as a lawyer for the Clintons during the Whitewater investigation — even though Loretta Lynn has never practiced law, a fact that is easily checkable by watching the Oscar-winning 1980 Lynn bio-pic, “A Coal Miner’s Daughter.”

Later, Breitbart.com followed up the first erroneous story with an article, “Loretta Lynch: A Qualified — But Political — Choice.” At some point after the second story went up, they realized they’d made what was, for once, an unintentional mistake. Not having protocols on hand for how to publicly correct or retract a reporting error, they simply removed the first story from their server — the link now boinks to a 404 error page.

They left the second story up by tagged the headline with an oblique reference to their mistake,”Update: Whitewater?” They also added a correction, in italics, at the end of the story acknowledging their error, but left the full, erroneous text intact.

By now, of course, the story that Pres. Obama has nominated an octogenarian country singer to be the next attorney general is gaining currency in all the usual right-wing outlets — World Net Daily, Drudge, Newsmax and the rest, where truth is a toothpaste that can never be put back in the tube. It’s only a matter of time before House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., drags Loretta Lynn before his committee to grill her about Vince Foster’s suicide.

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Loretta Lynch
Loretta Lynch
Just kidding: Of course, we know that Brietbart.com actually confused Loretta Lynch, the New York U.S. Attorney, with Loretta Lynch, a former attorney for the Clintons during the Whitewater investigation. Here’s a photo of the “other” attorney named Loretta Lynch.

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