As PHXated noted earlier today, New Times is an amazing paper with a lot of amazing reporters.

(Readers should know that PHXated worked for New Times in San Francisco way back when and counts the owners and editors among his friends.)

But James King, one of the paper’s frequent political reporters and bloggers, really seems to have a big ol' crush on Ben Quayle.

I’ve noted this a couple of times already, but am just now going back to read everything King’s written about Young Ben.

For starters, PHXated’s written about this already here and here.

Here’s another example.

The other day King trumpeted that Politico had “backed off” its story about Quayle and Dirty Scottsdale:

Here’s what apparently went down: the Politico reporter called Quayle at his house around 6 a.m. It’s an unlisted number but because Quayle’s wife’s father was in the hospital that morning, Quayle answered the phone.

The reporter asked Quayle if he was involved with founding The Dirty. He said no. The followup question asked if he was involved at all. Still thinking the reporter was referring to the founding of the Web site, Quayle answered no again. At no point did the reporter ask the candidate if he had written for the Web site.

Now, again, I respect King, and one shouldn’t be glib about the work of a serious reporter. But this is bullshit.

Again, here’s the original Politico passage:

“I did not have a role in founding that site,” Quayle, a lawyer who runs a small Scottsdale investment firm, told POLITICO in an interview Tuesday morning when asked whether he was one of the original contributors to the sex-themed site.

“I was not involved in the site,” he said when pressed about whether he had any role.

You know what happened; the reporter sensed that Quayle was choosing his words carefully. She said, “Did you have any role?” He replied, “I was not involved with the site” — which was, plainly, a lie.

What part of “did you have any role” does King not understand?

The reason I think King is carrying Quayle’s water is that he, like the Quayle campaign, is trying to split hairs on an ancillary issue.

The point is that Quayle was running around with folks putting up an ultraskanky web site. Now he’s a family-values Republican. The main issue is hypocrisy. This wasn’t ten or fifteen years ago. It was three years ago.

Then when questioned about it he lied. That’s another thing that Republicans are supposed to be all so moral about.

Then Quayle (and King) play the sympathy card, that Quayle was worried about his father-in-law and groggily picked up the phone at 6 a.m.

But he obviously had the presence of mind to try to finesse the issue in Clintonian fashion instead of just answering the question truthfully.

He could have said, “Oh, yeah, I used to know Nik Ritchie. I wrote some things for his web site but that’s it.”

A reporter who wasn’t spinning things Quayle’s way would a) bring up the hypocrisy; b) note that at the very least Quayle was being a weasel, at the worst lying, and c) note, as PHXated has consistently, that Quayle has been lying again when he says his story has been consistent.

… not to mention the fact that Quayle’s probably still lying when he says he wasn’t Brock Landers (why would Nik Ritchie make that up?), and that he was lying some more when he said he just posted “comments” on the site, and that he was lying some more when he told Politico that he hadn’t introduced the Dirty Scottsdale guy to some lawyers … and evaded the question when reporters asked him specifics about what he did do for the site:

“What kind of comments?” the reporter asked.

“This is four years ago,” Quayle replied. “This is hilarious this is being brought up. … This is a smear. This is a smear on me from a smear website being pushed by a smear campaign.”