Earlier this week Rachel Maddow broadcast a story that contained a reference to a satirical web site that Maddow and/or her staff took to be real. It was embarrassing, to be sure, but Maddow owned up to it the same day without reservation:

Maddow: Props to them for a brilliant piece of satire, shame on us for believing them. But in a world where China taking over New Zealand is what passes for real analysis on the situation in Egypt, how do we know that’s not satire too?

The latter half of that comment was obviously intended to be ironic and humorous. However, since the professional conservative bashing society has no sense of humor, they laid into Maddow with accusations that she was blaming others for her mistake. For example:

• NewsBusters: Maddow Blames Beck and Other Conservatives for Her Getting Duped by Satirical Website
• Fox Nation: Maddow’s Excuse for Reporting Spoof Story as Fact: It’s Beck’s Fault!
• Pajamas Media: Rachel Maddow gets suckered by Palin hoax, blames Beck
• David Horowitz’s NewsReal: River in Egypt: Rachel Maddow blames Glenn Beck for her own stupidity

On Glenn Beck’s radio show, sidekick Pat Gray went on an extended rant wherein he called Maddow an idiot and said that she was…

“So deceptive. So deceitful. Such Liars. Rachel, take responsibility for your own actions. Man up. Or woman up, whatever the case may be.”

For Beck and his crew to accuse others of being deceitful is its own kind of irony. Especially when Gray was being deceitful in this very rant. He asserted that Maddow spent three and a half minutes of a five minute segment blaming Beck for her error. In fact, Maddow spent only a minute and a half of an eight minute segment on the subject, and thirty seconds of that was consumed in replaying the original video of her mistake.

These critics should also be aware that Maddow is not alone in getting hooked by a hoax. Fox Nation posted a fake story about Obama emails, without attribution, by the satirists at The Onion. Several right-wingers, including Fox, posted a fake story about a global warming activist who had allegedly frozen to death. Fox, Rush Limbaugh, and others posted stories about a fake college thesis by Obama. Fox & Friends aired a bogus story about jetpacks being purchased by the Los Angeles Police Department. And this doesn’t even count the hoaxes that are invented by Fox, Andrew Breitbart, Sarah Palin, Glenn beck, et al.

It should also be noted that, but for the errant reference to the satirical site, Maddow was making a valid point. At times it really can be difficult to separate satire from reality with regard to right-wing conspiracies. The other examples she used in the segment were that China was taking over New Zealand (Beck), that Obama supports annihilation of Israel (Atlas Shrugged), and that the turmoil in Egypt was a plot hatched by unions (RedState). Those are all real, and all delusional. It’s a shame that the point is being obscured because of the one item she included that was phony.

That is not an excuse for making editorial mistakes. The problem isn’t that there are satirical commentaries that sound too much like actual events. The problem is that conservative analyses of actual events sound too much like satire.