The response to Klein’s garbage claims was fairly universal on the right – disgust. Mark Coffey posts on an article by John Conason which was reasonably balanced and noted the uproar on the conservative blogs. So there was some hope of recognition from the left they would appreciate our disgust with Klein’s hatchet job.

But Ed Morrissey has a post on the liberal MSM’s attempts to smear the right with this garbage. Of course this comes from the liberal brain trust at the NY Times which points to sites with ads for Klein’s book as proof of a coordinated attempt by the right to smear Hillary:

The Conservative Book Club Web site has placed the book, by Edward Klein, a former editor of The New York Times Magazine, at the top of a page devoted to books critical of the Clintons.

The book also has a patron in NewsMax.com, a Web site operated by a company that Mr. Scaife has a stake in. The site has been offering the book free with subscriptions or renewals to NewsMax magazine.

“Hillary has good reason to be worried about this book,” the Web site says. “Publishing insiders say the book and its revelations could destroy her bid to run for the presidency in 2008.”

The only one smearing is Klein. No mention of the uproar against the book of course. This had concerned me early on when the news broke and blog ads on sites raging against the smear campaign were also showing the book prominently. Poliblogger did the right thing in making sure the ad was off the site while posting against Klein and his rumors.

I had emailed Powerline that they too had the ad up and it looked weird to have them hammering Klein while the ad for his book was running right next to their post. They responded with what I felt was a reasonable approach – which was to notify their readers that they do not control the ad content:

We got an email from a reader who questioned the fact that an ad for Klein’s book appears on this site. We accepted the ad, of course, before we knew anything about the content of the book. More generally, our policy has been not to undertake to investigate or vouch for the products and services that are advertised here, but rather to accept any advertising that is not offensive on its face. Consistent with that policy, we presumably would have accepted the ad even if we had known that the book contained content of which we disapprove.

This reasonable approach is lost on the liberal MSM, who now are using these ads to imply some conspiracy from the right. Image does count. The book was touted for week’s and its release was anticipated by the right. Maybe it was a truly ingenious set up. But that does not matter really. If we are truly against something I think we need to make sure our actions (or non-actions) do not undermine those beliefs. We cannot let the liberal MSM use ads to replace our honest outrage on this subject.