You know you’re having a bad day, Joan Walsh, when it’s just you and Max Blumenthal alone in a foxhole while you’re being overwhelmed by the truth. Because David Weigel, one of your sources for Blumenthal’s story and Max’s own blog posts that James O’Keefe once helped organize a “racist conference,”  has now “clarified” his remarks and guess what?  Your story just fell apart.  Read it and weep:

Clarification — and Mea Culpa — on James O’Keefe and ‘Race and Conservatism’

On Wednesday, I wrote a post reacting to Max Blumenthal’s story “James O’Keefe’s Race Problem” and was too quick with a description of the August 30, 2006 Robert Taft Club event on “race and conservatism.” Specifically, I wrote this:

“A zoomed-in headshot of James O’Keefe (after the jump), then working for the Leadership Institute, survived, although it cropped out the table he was sitting at, covered in controversial literature.”

In a later post, I walked this back: While I’d been at the event, it was Isis, a photographer/investigator for the One People’s Project, who told me that her photo was actually a picture of O’Keefe at a table of controversial literature. But several e-mailers and commenters have pointed out that my first post appeared to endorse Blumenthal’s whole story. I want to quickly walk through that story and point out the parts that, based on my experience at the event and interviews with Isis and event organizer Marcus Epstein, were not true.

photo-in-context

There follows five points of material error in Blumenthal’s story and in the original post at the “anti-racist” website, One People’ s Project (whose site is adorned with the old Soviet Union colors of red and gold, and features a Soviet-style logo).   Among the revelations:

O’Keefe has denied any role in planning the event, and Epstein has backed him up. In an interview yesterday, Isis told me: “I don’t believe O’Keefe planned the event.”

Weigel goes on to say:

I stand by the rest of my description of the event in my original post. But later that day, as Breitbart started pushing back against the story, I wrote: “I’m curious to see what Breitbart goes after — I was at the 2006 event that leads Blumenthal’s story and can confirm all the details about it.” That was sloppy phrasing — I meant that I could confirm all the stuff I’d already written. I had no idea that One People’s Project had told Breitbart’s reporter that I could confirm the facts as presented by them. They should stand by their own story — and they really, really need to produce a full photo of O’Keefe at the event.

Now the indispensable Patterico (Patrick Frey) has joined the fray.  In a post this morning, Patterico dissects Weigel’s mea culpa and adds:

Weigel is far from conservative — but he does appear to me to be an honest writer. Now, according to the logic of the left, the fact that Weigel was at the event means he is a racist and you can’t believe anything he says. Right? But assuming you don’t subscribe to that loony “logic,” you might pay some attention to what Weigel has to say.

Max Blumenthal’s story has completely fallen apart. It is time for Salon to issue a lengthy and detailed retraction.

You can read our request for retractions here.

Over to you Joan and Max.