Blogging is supposed to provide instant opinionating and fact checking, but misinformation still spreads with amazing ease.

This tale starts at Medienkritik, which accuses the German media of "drawing parallels among the American soldiers’ abuses in Abu Ghraib, Jesus Christ’s crucifixion and the Nazi’s concentration camps." A serious charge, if true.

The evidence? An article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung by feminist critic Alice Schwarzer, who observes that the outstretched arms of a hooded Iraqi prisoner at Abu Ghraib remind us of the crucifixion and that photographs of heaps of naked bodies there remind us of photos of heaps of naked bodies in concentration camps. From which she concludes ... nothing. She doesn't allege that the two events are equivalent. She doesn't excuse German behavior. She doesn't even mention the analogy again. The article is instead about whether women react to and inflict torture in ways different from men (a possibility that right-wing darling Ann Coulter also has raised).

Now some people maintain that the magnitude of horror in the Holocaust was so great that it can't be compared to anything else. I don't agree with that and think it is potentially dangerous because it can make us dismissive of the possibility that such a thing could happen again. But I understand the argument and respect it.

Still, you don't have to read German to notice that Medienkritik is hyperventilating. For one thing, it acknowledges that the article had appeared only in a "low-circulation, leftist, feminist rag" and as an opinion piece in the Frankfurt paper. It takes a mighty broad brush to make a throwaway line in two publications hold up for an indictment of the "German media."

Second, Medienkritik even provides a photo link to prove its point that Schwarzer is ugly. Writing can be a tough racket, but one benefit is that it provides a level playing field for ugly people. Medienkritik clearly has lost all perspective.

Nevertheless, the post got picked up in Jeff Jarvis' Buzzmachine, which quoted it without comment, and in Glenn Reynolds' popular Instapundit, who adds the observation, "This self-serving historical revisionism pretty much explains the German position on the war. Note to Germans: You're not fooling anyone but yourselves."

No, Glenn, you are fooling yourself. A Medienkritik commenter said his posting was "profoundly dishonest and morally corrupt," and that's giving him all the best of it. Even if you put the worst possible face on Schwarzer's allusion, Reynolds' interpretation is wildly irresponsible. He has turned one offhand comment in one opinion piece in one German newspaper into an indictment not only of all German media but of the German people as a whole. If this nonsense had appeared in the mainstream media, bloggers would be all over it.

As it is, the blogging world still has a lot of growing up to do. As this incident demonstrates, simply having the power to link doesn't prevent bad information from spreading. You still have to go read the post.