Yesterday, we noted the journalistic morals of the George Soros-funded Minnesota Monitor, which ran a Molly Priesmeyer article on its front page that made fun of John McCain’s teeth. Priesmeyer didn’t bother to research why his teeth look like “a mess of yellowed and contorted Chiclets” — which was that his torturers in Vietnam smashed his teeth to the gumline.

Today, the MinnMon, which gets its funding from Center for Independent Media, continues to demonstrate the ethics of the Sorosphere. After acknowledging the fact that she didn’t bother to research her topic, Priesmeyer has yet to write a correction or apology — and the story remains on the front page. Priesmeyer left this as a comment to her own story:

I was not aware of the fact [of the torture]. I simply was linking to a post that revealed “his teeth” had become a topic of discussion on the blogosphere. Buzzfeed.com is an aggregator site that collects trends of the day.

Best,

Molly

Well, she wasn’t aware of it because she didn’t bother looking for an explanation. Further, she didn’t just link to the Buzzfeed article, she endorsed it, as this demonstrates:

While looks are an easy and lame target, it’s at least refreshing to see McCain’s teeth get a razzing (though, unfortunately, not a cleaning).

And, now that she’s been made aware of it, Molly hasn’t lifted a finger to correct the story — something even bloggers know how to do. The front page as of 12:30 PM ET today:

Classy as always. (via Mitch Berg)

Update: The MinnMon has finally removed the article from its front page, and two of its editors have apologized for the post.  Steve Perry added an update:

To answer the question from GOP blogger Michael Brodkorb that kicked off the controversy about this post yesterday: No, neither Molly Priesmeyer nor I was aware that McCain had had his teeth broken as a North Vietnamese prisoner of war. No, we would not have piled on with further aspersions on the appearance of his teeth if we had known.

The item was not intended to make a serious point of any sort, as we thought the headline suggested right off the bat (“The dental gap: Does McCain have presidential teeth?”). It was a bit of web ephemera that we found funny mainly for its absurdity–sort of like the videos we’ve posted from Obama Girl, the McCain Girls, and La Pequena, and items we’ve written about phenomena such as social media sites obsessed with Barack Obama. The POW backstory turns a joke noted in passing into a lousy joke. And we’re sorry for that.

We’re also sorry that this dust-up has inadvertently provided yet another sideshow in which genuinely important questions about the candidate and his campaign are circumvented. There’s far too much of that going around.

Two responses come immediately to mind:

1. Doesn’t Perry think that Priesmeyer should have checked it out by doing research before making fun of McCain’s teeth?  “We didn’t know” sounds pretty lame from an organization that considers itself a journalistic enterprise.
2. How did a post on McCain’s teeth keep “genuinely important questions about the candidate” in the forefront?  Didn’t Priesmeyer do exactly what Perry blames on the “dust-up”, which is to focus on irrelevancies rather than issues?  Wasn’t the “dust-up” necessary to show how vacuous and dull-witted the MinnMon’s fascination with McCain’s teeth had been?  Perry says essentially that we shouldn’t have taken the story seriously, and our insistence on doing so distracts from serious matters.  Huh?

Inadvertently, the removal of the post deleted the long string of critical comments to the story, but another commenter reposted them from a cache.