What happened? Lee Fang lowered the choom on Mehdi Hasan and ripped him a new one.
Who's Lee Fang? He's an "independent journalist" who used to write for the Nation and the Intercept. He likes to smoke weed.
Who's Mehdi Hasan? He's a fancy British journalist who worked for Al Jazeera before joining MSNBC as a host. He likes to post insufferably on social media.
READ MORE: HuffPo's House Jihadi
Can you explain what happened again in more detail? Sure. In a Substack post published Tuesday, Fang compellingly demonstrated that Hasan is guilty of plagiarism and other crimes against journalism.
The pair have been feuding for several days over Hasan's criticism of journalist Matt Taibbi and his extensive reporting on the so-called Twitter Files. Fang called Hasan a liar; Hasan accused Fang of being an Islamophobe.
What did Hasan plagiarize? Among other things, he blatantly plagiarized a 1998 U.S. News & World Report article on spanking, which the British refer to as "smacking" because they're weird. In 2000, Hasan published a column in the Independent, titled "No Harm in Smacking," which copied large sections of the 1998 article, "When to Spank," in some cases word for word.
Yeah, that's egregious. What else? Fang highlights several other (less blatant) examples of Hasan's plagiarism. He also compellingly accuses the MSNBC host of "cozying up" to powerful figures and being willing to "bend any principle in the service of his career."
For example, Fang recounts the time in 2013 when Hasan denounced the Daily Mail as a hotbed of bigotry, which prompted the British tabloid to publish Hasan's obsequious application letter for a columnist position.
"I believe the Mail has a vitally important role to play in the national debate, and I admire your relentless focus on the need for integrity and morality in public life, and your outspoken defence of faith, and Christian culture, in the face of attacks from militant atheists and secularists," Hasan wrote to the paper's editor in 2010.
That's pretty embarrassing. Yeah.
But MSNBC has a long history of hiring dishonest hacks, don't they? Indeed they do.
Can I ask another question? Absolutely.
What's today's date? It's April 19.
What about tomorrow? April 20, obviously.
So, 4/20 right? Yes, tomorrow is 4/20.
Nice.