Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid gave kudos on Tuesday to the Las Vegas man who pulled a hoax on the conservative media this month after circulating a false story that Reid’s recent facial injury came from a punchout by his brother, Larry Reid.
“What this guy proved to me is that journalism doesn’t exist,” Reid told Reuters. “I wish I’d meet this guy and pat him on the back.”
The man known as Larry Pfeifer told The Las Vegas Sun about his scam in an article published Sunday. After he found out that conservatives on the Internet doubted Reid’s explanation for abrasions to his eyes and face — from an exercise accident — he peddled a tale that Reid’s brother had stumbled into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and rattled off a story about how he had just beaten up a family member.
The sucker in this case was conservative blogger John Hinderaker, who published the tale on his blog, Power Line, on April 3, broadcasted it as a guest host on Laura Ingraham’s radio show on April 9, and then finally shopped it to Rush Limbaugh, who aired it on his program on April 15.
In an interview with TPM on Tuesday, Hinderaker said that he didn’t do much to vet Pfeifer but restated his suspicion of Reid’s story.
Pfeifer intended to get onto Limbaugh’s show himself and expose the hoax for what it was at the end of the interview, according to the Sun, but after the shock jock giant demurred, he decided to blow the whistle to the newspaper.
Reporters mentioned to Reid that Pfeifer apologized if his experiment in punking the rightwing media had any negative effects on him or his family.
“I don’t see why he should apologize,” Reid said. “I’m glad at what he did. It shows how foolish journalism is as we know it. It’s evaporating and that’s too bad.”
