I'm a liberal Democrat, and forty years ago I played Little League baseball with Bill Haslam. I like Bill, but he's too conservative for me and I'm too liberal for him. If I still lived in Tennessee, I'd be voting McWherter even though he's not anywhere close to liberal.

That said, I want to defend Bill from Steve Barrett's column in the Chattanooga News-Free Times Free Press. Barrett is deceitful from start to finish and relies on his readers' eager ignorance. No doubt, lots of them qualify - the American public proves P.T. Barnum right every day.

For instance, Barrett pretends that Haslam has made ad buys directly on Huffington Post. Maybe Haslam has - a real journalist would find out - but lots of web ad buys use what amounts to a wholesaler, Google for example, who then puts your ad up on lots of sites with matching keywords. I see Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin all the time on the liberal sites I visit, and I know they're not there supporting my cause. My guess is that Barrett knows this and is trying to bullshit the unwary. (And his readers aren't even insulted by this!)

Barrett also calls the Knoxville News-Sentinel liberal. No kidding:

It’s no wonder the liberal Knoxville News Sentinel is cheering for Mayor Haslam in the primary. Let’s give the News Sentinel the benefit of the doubt and assume the endorsement was not a case of hometown bias. That leaves one obvious explanation for why he got the endorsement: At least in the GOP primary, he is the candidate most in line with the Knoxville paper’s liberal views.

Barrett again is relying on his readers not knowing the actual facts. The sly innuendo that the Sentinel might endorse a Democrat in the general after the Republican primary is done is cute, but he has to know the conservative record of the Sentinel. Again, he's lying.

Barrett refers to the Memphis Commercial Appeal's primary endorsement of Haslam, but he doesn't say it's an endorsement, and he doesn't link to it. The lack of a link permits him to misconstrue the CA's statement from:

[T]he even further-left Memphis Commercial Appeal embraces Mr. Haslam’s “approach toward major social issues."

to what the CA actually wrote:

Haslam also stands much closer to the Tennessee mainstream in his approach toward major social issues.

Barrett alleges that Haslam contributed $1000 to Al Gore, though he's not specific about when. A quick search on OpenSecrets.org shows just how thoroughly Republican Haslam is. A search specifically for Haslam contributions to Al Gore shows zero hits, but that's probably because OpenSecrets hasn't yet backfilled the 2000 Presidential data. Or maybe Barrett simply made it up - his record doesn't inspire confidence.

What Barrett has been able to prove is that, whatever the Time Free Press has as its editorial policy regarding the governor's race, he's in the tank for Wamp, despite his protest to the contrary.

Half-truths would be a step up from Barrett's column, which is a thin tissue of dishonesty. No doubt, if Barrett knew that Bill batted left-handed in Little League, he'd try to make something nefarious out of that.

In any honest journalistic organization, Barrett's easily visible dishonesty would be grounds for termination.

Since few publishers still value the truth over entertainment, readers have to sanction Barrett on our own - by never, ever again believing anything he writes.