George Harleigh, Would You Please Call the Editor?

A fascinating story is popping up on several blogs this morning, concerning quotes from the now apparently bogus persona of a professor named George Harleigh. "Harleigh" is purported to be a poli-sci prof who allegedly worked for the Nixon and Reagan administrations. And for some reason, the MSM has trotted him out regularly to provide quotes that always trash President Bush in some way, shape, or form.

According to Classical Values:

Philadelphia journalist Steve Silver ... is also asking questions about George Harleigh:

Calls by the blogger to SIU, and searches of Lexus-Nexis for published material by him, find no mention of Harleigh, and he's not mentioned on Google anywhere other than in providing quotes to blogs. Anyone ever heard of this guy, and have any evidence that exists or did exist? I'm figuring either he's real and everyone's wrong, or someone just made him up and his same few quotes have been recycled again and again for years, or there's some guy out there claiming to be a disgruntled former Nixon/Reagan aide.

Classical Values, in its long post, charts the gestation and use of this apparent long-running hoax. To me, a newspaper writer for nearly 20 years, this can only mean one of two things: the MSM is in collusion to use even fictitious characters to smear Bush; or the MSM, whose fact-checking is virtually non-existent when it comes to supplies of quotes that trash Bush and Republicans, is even lazier, sloppier, and more casual about digging out the truth than I thought, particularly when it offends their Marxist ideology.

Frankly, I prefer choice 2 above. I regard the MSM as too lazy and stupid to put together a conspiracy of this magnitude.