Media Matters links to a comment in the the WSJ’s Best of the Web Today about one of their items. They don’t take issue with any of it, but Taranto said something blindingly stupid:

MediaMatters.org–tirelessly exposing conservative bias by conservative commentators for over 1/129th of a century–apparently finds fault with one of yesterday’s items:

Responding to a Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network initiative for middle school students called “No Name-Calling Week” in his January 25 online “Best of the Web” column, Wall Street Journal OpinionJournal.com editor James Taranto claimed that Senator John Kerry and former Senator John Edwards “call[ed] Dick Cheney’s daughter names, and many in the gay-rights crowd thought it was just peachy.” During the 2004 presidential campaign, Senators Kerry and Edwards referred to Cheney’s daughter, Mary Cheney, who is a lesbian, as “a lesbian” and “gay.”

Taranto did not provide examples of the “names” he claimed Kerry and Edwards called Mary Cheney, but presumably he was referring to two instances.

Wow, nothing gets past these guys. MediaMatters implies–and some of our readers echo the point (as do a whole bunch of MediaMatters-incited spammers, some of whom call us names)–that we were wrong to characterize this as “name-calling.”

Maybe they’re right, but we suspect that if a schoolkid called a classmate “gay” or “a lesbian,” the folks at the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network would not approve.

I can’t really think of anything to say to that.