Lying, hate-filled, arrogant, et cetera, ad infinitum fillmmaker created a brouhaha last week when he accused Disney of violating his First Amendment rights by refusing to distribute his latest film pack of lies.

Well, a day later it came out that Moore knew long ago that Disney wouldn't be distributing his film. The entire story was a plea for attention -- duly granted by The New York Times, among others.

Mr. Moore's agent said that Michael Eisner, Disney's chief executive, had expressed concern that the film might jeopardize tax breaks granted to Disney for its theme park, hotels and other ventures in Florida, where Jeb Bush is governor. If that is the reason for Disney's move, it would underscore the dangers of allowing huge conglomerates to gobble up diverse media companies.

If the New York Times were a newspaper they would've checked out the validity of this claim, instead of mindlessly parroting it. It turns out, this claim is patently untrue.

In politics, this is called rolling. It's the oldest trick in the book. The word "anger" never appeared in The [New York] Times story, by the way. Moore hoodwinked The Times, which didn't bother to run a response from the Governor's Office in the story.

The Times also didn't seem to check whether Disney does get any tax incentives from Florida. You think there would have been some skepticism, given that Ari Emanuel is a well-known Hollywood liberal who was involved in the Howard Dean campaign.

That didn't stop Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who wrote Thursday that Eisner acted "probably out of fear that Jeb will come after his Disney World tax breaks."

The Times again referred to the possibility of the tax breaks in a Thursday editorial headlined "Disney's Craven Behavior."

The Los Angeles Times also opined on the matter, repeating Moore's charge of Disney tax breaks that "depend on the goodwill of Gov. Jeb Bush."

If the parks did get any tax breaks, they certainly didn't depend on Jeb Bush's goodwill. Jeb couldn't tax himself without the Legislature. And lately he would have better luck getting four mules to sing in a barbershop quartet than getting the Legislature to do his bidding.

But backed by the media coverage, Moore was off and running with the Bush Brothers conspiracy.

Have there been any corrections on the issue from the Times? You've got to be kidding.

Disney chairman Michel Eisner responded today with this letter, which will apparently serve as a pseudo-correction, something the Times does when it is unwilling to run a real correction.