How Quickly Spread the Tea Party Smear

"Only two possibilities present themselves, neither of them good: Douglas had started writing this enormously consequential article in advance and/or he assembled it with a reckless indifference to the facts. A simple call to the Capitol Police would have killed the spitting story and a review of the video footage would have thrown the screaming of 'nigger' by multiple 'protestors' into such serious doubt that no responsible paper would have printed it."