I was curious to see how Jim Hoft, the homophobic, bigoted, borderline illiterate religious fanatic who blogs at Catholic website First Things, was dealing with the fact that the right’s idiotic “reverse racism” Shirley Sherrod scandal had spectacularly blown up in their faces.

Hoft, of course, is still foaming at the mouth, calling Sherrod a “white farmer-hater.” Never mind that the farmers say she’s a lifelong friend who saved their farm.

But it gets even stupider, because now Hoft is trying to tie Sherrod to former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers: Figures. Shirley Sherrod Is Linked to Terrorist Bill Ayers.

Hoft’s diatribe begins with one of his inimitable word salads:

It’s days like these that you begin to wonder is there anyone in this administration who is not a communist, radical, socialist, terror-sympathizer?
You really have to wonder some days.

What I was wondering as I read this clumsy opening: why First Things hired such a witless hack as a “writer,” and what kind of ludicrous, easily debunked “link” he was going to dredge up from his feverish imagination. So I read on, got to the end, and … where the hell was the “link?”

Hoft never gets around to covering that little detail. Instead, he links to a couple of far right blogs (ranting about “reparations,” of course) that mention in passing that in the 1960s, Sherrod’s husband was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. So I read on through the muck, looking for the link to Ayers.

I should have known better than to think there would be an actual “link” in there somewhere.

It turns out that in Hoft’s bizarre world of blind hatred, Sherrod’s husband’s membership in the SNCC is the link, because Bill Ayers was also in the SNCC. Yes, that’s it. That’s the link. I hope you were sitting down for that bombshell revelation.

Earlier the same day, Hoft was claiming that NAACP CEO Ben Jealous was at the meeting where Shirley Sherrod gave her now-famous speech. It’s completely untrue, but Hoft never posted a correction, of course.