[UPDATE: Random politeness requests that I note that Ethics Alarms has splutteringly responded to me.  Random professional pride suggests that I note that my “let’s add an ‘as-near-as-I-can-tell’ to that one” impulse did what it had to do: which is to say, handily avoid the need for a potentially embarrassing correction.  Random schadenfreude more or less demands that I cheerfully note that my larger message – that entire “self-absorbed, pretentious websites that hate hardcore social conservatives” thing – seems to have… hit the target pretty mostly on-target, nu?  It’s so nice to have them admit that you’ve had an impact.  Particularly when doing so rips off any pretenses that might have existed.]

Via Instapundit comes this shocked, shocked, tut-tutting examination of the recent unforced error that Harry Reid has found himself in. The background: it was recently demonstrated that the Senate [Majority] [Oops!} Leader was and is apparently able to lie in public and get away with it. Specifically, Reid demonstrated that he could make up a story about Mitt Romney evading his income tax – see here for a brutally precise examination of why anybody who believes this attack by Reid should not be allowed to operate heavy financial institutions – and be… not humiliated and shamed for it. Alas for Harry Reid, there is a critical mass of people who are currently unwilling to simply let things like this slide, which is why Harry Reid’s name is currently being linked with pederasty even as we speak. Also, apparently Reid was unprepared for this, which is why his office did not actually, well, deny the charges*.

Hence the aforementioned shocked, shocked response from this Ethics Alarms site, which is very disapproving of the whole thing, and goes so far as to call it ‘santoruming.’ For those unfamiliar with the concept, Ethics Alarms provides a footnote: “Thanks to blogger Dan Savage, the former GOP Senator’s name is now a synonym for a disgusting bodily discharge.” And that, of course, is just as bad when it happens to Harry Reid as it was when it happened to Rick Santorum.

…which, given that (as near as I can tell) this seems to be the first time that Ethics Alarms has bothered to mention to the world that, hey, attacking Rick Santorum like that was bad, just indicates to me that the “Reid is a Pederast” meme is having the desired effect. It’s getting self-absorbed, pretentious websites that hate hardcore social conservatives** to stand up for those self-same social conservatives! Without prompting, even! Lo, indeed, truly we live in an Age of Wonders.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*You can deny the charges. You can (sometimes) ignore the charges. But you can’t respond to the charges without denying them.  Well, OK, you can… but it’s dumb to do it that way.

**I mean, hey, I thought that I was moderately unfond of Rick Santorum. Turns out that I have nothing on Ethics Alarms. The hypocrites.