Is Media Matters raising the white flag in its war with Fox News?

That this much-ballyhooed book from David Brock and his leftist Media Matters scribblers is such a grade-school style cut-and-paste leaves the distinct impression.

Boy those Media Matters guys were going to really show Fox News. One reads all this great reporting from the Daily Caller and it becomes clear that when the call goes up for a shot and a beer the shot in question at the Media Matters offices must be for rabies.

All this writing and moaning and obsessing about Fox News — and this is the result?

Aside from boasting about wanting to hire private investigators, there was this line the Daily Caller revealed from a Media Matters memo:

“[W]e should write a book under David’s name that savages Fox News and Fox News employees. The market for this is likely huge.”

Doubtless that may be true — huge with the 20% crowd that routinely self-identifies as liberal. But for anybody else?

This book is nothing but what used to be called a cut-and-paste job. Old news and older news repackaged and marketed as some inside scoop. Oh sure, they name names. Have you ever heard of Sean Hannity? Did you know he’s a conservative? You will now. And Roger Ailes — he whose name is in the book’s subtitle: “How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine.” That Roger Ailes? Well, there’s artfully arranged stories taken from the anti-Ailes gang over there at Rolling Stone or here and over there. The man defended the honor of Christmas at his son’s school. Ohhhhhhhhhhh the humanity!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And so on and so on, right on through Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Megyn Kelly… yada yada yada.

Thanks to the Daily Caller we now know that when Brock cites ex-Obama White House aide Anita Dunn, as he does in this pitiful little book, Dunn is a “regular presence” in the Media Matters office. We know when Brock approvingly cites the Washington Post‘s Greg Sargent, although Brock certainly isn’t about to report the fact, that MM used Sargent because “If you can’t get it [a story placed] anywhere else, Greg Sargent’s always game.” We know when he cites then-Politico reporter Ben Smith (who has since left Politico) it may have something to do with the fact that, as the DC alleges, Smith deliberately withheld negative information in a story about Media Matters.

So. In short? Nothing new in Brock’s book, much less scurrilous.

Unless, of course, you are David Brock and the Media Matters gang.

And in the end? The closer that can only mean they have real need to drink something over at Media Matters? Writes a frustrated Brock of his repeatedly futile efforts to harpoon his whale:

Most problematic, once these lies take hold, no amount of fact-checking by Media Matters or websites such as PolitiFact or Factcheck.org will ever convince the segment of the population that is predisposed to believe them…. There is simply nothing comparable on the left.

Oh damn!

Aside from the admission of defeat, this last business is also, surprise, yet another left-wing untruth. Nothing comparable? Really? How about the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC and more Mainstream Liberal Media outlets pumping out liberal propaganda hourly, daily, yearly? The only reason Fox News exists is that truth long ago departed from these precincts.

And people like David Brock and his friends are furious they’ve lost their monopoly.

Lost it to Roger Ailes.

And people like Sean Hannity.

Oh… excuse me… you know who Sean Hannity is, right?

I thought so. And in a nutshell, that’s what drives Media Matters crazy. And to an exercise in cutting and pasting.