***updated: tracking the source of the bogus Flickr photos…Wonkette editors demonstrate further malice…***

***update 9/30 6:25pm…I have just heard from the student whose pictures were stolen from Webshots by the creator of the bogus Flickr site. She is Ashley Herzog of Ohio University (not Oberlin, my alma mater, as the bogus Flickr site creator misled people into believing with fake captions). She has made note of the theft of her photos on the fake Flickr site and is contemplating legal action against the creator of the Flickr site who smeared both of us. Good for her.

FYI, she writes: “I looked at the fake flickr page. Nearly all of the pictures were stolen from my Webshots account, username Ashley11485. In the picture of the four girls in formal dresses, I also recognize a girl I went to high school with, Megan del Corral (she’s on the far right)…The girl in the formal dress picture (who is supposedly you), is Ohio State student Meredith Chan.”***

I have had a nice afternoon with my family. I was not going to post on the lying hate-mongers again, but they will not stop. If they think I am going to shut up about their continued deranged smear job, think again.

I sent this e-mail to the Wonkette editors at 8:13am Eastern:

From: Michelle Malkin

Mailed-By: gmail.com

Reply-To: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: Sep 29, 2006 8:13 AM

Subject: It’s a photoshop, you idiots

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/006012.htm

Hours after my post noting that the photo was fake was published, Wonkette’s sister site, Gawker , went ahead and published this:

I was working at NBC News in Washington, D.C., in March 1992, but the facts and the truth simply do not matter to these hate-mongers.

At 1:24pm Eastern, I sent the editors of Gawker this e-mail with the forwarded message I sent to Wonkette:

From: Michelle Malkin

Mailed-By: gmail.com

Reply-To: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: Sep 29, 2006 1:24 PM

Subject: Fwd: It’s a photoshop, you idiots

My post went up at 8:11am:

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/006012.htm

I sent this to Wonkette at 8:13am this morning…

Instead of a correction and apology, the Gawker editors insulted me some more:

Oh, it gets better.

Instead of issuing a correction and apology, Ken Layne at Wonkette suggests that I am lying about the fake photo:

I have informed Layne the photo is fake. Not only has he not issued a correction or apology, he is maliciously accusing me of lying. And notice that the Nick Denton smear machine can’t get its story straight. The Gawker editors say “Yes, of course, it’s fake!” The Wonkette editors scoff: “The story so far: Malkin is apparently claiming the all-but-naked picture of her is somehow “photoshopped,” whatever that means. Sure it is, Michelle, sure it is.”

Which is it?

Nick Denton, perhaps too busy IM’ing insults with Ken Layne, has not responded to my e-mail requesting a correction and apology.

Meanwhile UNC professor Eric Muller has issued an apology:

UPDATE, 3:00 p.m.: It appears that I was mistaken when I linked to the picture on flickr below, which I believed to be a picture of Michelle Malkin. I regret my error, and I apologize to Michelle Malkin for it. She has asked that I leave the post up — indeed, she has reprinted it — and so I will do as she wishes.

This doesn’t resolve the issue of whether Muller posted or e-mailed anything related to his false post from government-subsidized UNC computers, but it is a start.

***

Ace thinks I should sue. Any thoughts?

***

My good friend Ed Morrissey has ‘fessed up and revealed the true identitiy of the woman in the bikini:

LOL. Thanks for the laugh, Ed.

***

Update: Reader BruinEric has discovered where some of the original photos and captions that were posted onto the fake Flickr site came from–a site called Webshots. The blonde girl in the picture was not the forger. She is a victim, too:

Her real caption:

Here was the fake one:

Another bogus labeled photo from the Flickr site was photoshopped with a “3/27/92” timestamp:

The real photo at the Webshots page is here.

Reader K. writes:

The photos are probably in violation of the Flickr terms of use agreement users are supposed to abide by – check out http://flickr.com/terms.gne – and have at ’em. I’ve had success going a similar route with a whazoo-aperture posting a picture of me in a discussion forum that was hosted on photobucket – had the guy’s accounts nuked every time he posted the stolen picture of me.

***

Gotta love those tolerant lib commenters at Gawker:

The Wonkette editors continue to dig in and show their malice:

Reader David writes:

Michelle, trust me, they have talked to their lawyers, who told them (accurately) that parody is not actionable as libel. So now they are treating this as if it was a parody all along, which it was not.

Whatever you say, they will say something more outrageous now, as their tactic is to blend the original possible li[bel] into subsequent parody. That is why the fake photo is now in front of a relocation camp. Sick, lowlife parody, but also obvious parody.

John Hinderaker at Power Line writes:

The weirdest aspect of this latest liberal outrage is that a goofball law professor at the University of North Carolina–which is generally, I think, a reasonably well regarded institution–jumped on the bandwagon and, in all seriousness, accused Michelle of “hypocrisy” for trying to uphold normal standards of behavior despite having been photographed in a bikini in 1992. Apart from the fact that this guy 1) needs to get out more, and 2) needs to take a class in perspective so he’ll notice the proper relationship between heads and bodies, he also 3) should be fired because any law professor is expected to understand the concept of a non sequitur.

Increasingly, a basic equation is coming to dominate American politics: Liberal = hater.

So true.

Reader Marcia:

Let’s say the picture was real. How does that prove any sort of hypocrisy on your part?

You write a column denouncing Charlotte Church’s turning to raunchy dress and behavior (something every teen pop star seems to feel the need to do) with added Catholic bashing (not original either; see Sinead O’Connor circa 1987).

And Wonkette and this law prof say: “Gotcha!! How dare you decry the slutification of teen pop stars when you yourself once wore a bikini??!!”

Huh?

***

Previous:

Malkin Derangement Syndrome

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Update:

10/10/06: A personal aside