Liberal website libels Catholic author Dawn Eden

I watched this story develop over the weekend and around 9pm tonight I knew it was time to get involved. You see, it's a twisted tale - as twisted as the nutroots efforts to attack Sarah Palin in any way/shape/form that presents itself - including the fictitious.

I'll quickly describe the situation and you'll see what I mean.

A while ago Catholic author Dawn Eden (a personal friend, I should add) posted her SAT scores online. A few days ago, someone doing a Google image search for "SAT scores" found Dawn's photocopy, and substituted Sarah Palin's name for it - and replaced some of the scores with lower ones. The point of this forgery was to spread the rumor that Sarah Palin didn't perform well in her standardized testing.

Fast-forward a couple blog news cycles later, and most the major liberal outlets that had claimed the story to be true ... backed off.


Then Gawker stepped in it. Dawn:

"Three days ago in the post below, I exposed how Gawker fell for a forgery that purported to be Sarah Palin's SAT scoresheet but was actually a Photoshop job—made by someone who stole my own scoresheet off my blog and pasted in bad grades. Now, Gawker admits it fell for a forgery—and libels me by claiming the bad grades are mine.

That is just plain bad reporting, and, if not corrected, crosses the border into libel. (It would be hard for Gawker to prove absence of malice, given its previous reportage on me.)"

Click the image above or here for a preview of Gawker's post - no reason to give them traffic unless you are curious.

The only one with egg on their face at this point is Gawker, who swooped in on a story that was wrong to begin with, and then when they discovered their error, made a second serious error (or at least embarrassingly poor fact-gathering), and just presumed that because Dawn is a practicing, conservative, chastity-talk-giving Catholic ... well then she must be stupid.

Gee, if you look at the facts, it's Gawker that sure looks stupid. I mean - at least Dawn demonstrates fourth-grade reading comprehension. I'm not sure that I can say the same about Gawker.

Also, if anyone wants to represent Dawn against Gawker pro-bono, drop her a line.

Gawker might benefit from the detention.