Home / SC Politics / Meet The Anti-FITS

Meet The Anti-FITS

BLOGGERS “OUTED” AMID LEAKS TARGETING STATE’S LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR

FITSNews - March 11, 2008 - Ordinarily, the identity of mysterious bloggers matters about as much to us as which one of our pimped-out Escalades to take out for a night on the town. Black or white? Like our boy Jacko once said, it “don’t matter.” Of course, when those mysterious bloggers also pretend to be “unbiased journalists” (a mantle we’ve never been stupid enough to claim), well, we figure that makes them fair game when it comes to being called out.

Such is the case with the anti-FITS, a website that has made ripping on our founding editor Sic Willie a cottage industry. Well, it turns out that the authors of the “anti-FITS” are none other than local alternative journalists Corey Hutchins and Wes Wolfe, who recently penned this story for The (Columbia) Free Times. Ironically, Hutchins also penned a story for FITSNews last year.

The identity of these two bloggers, who pose as responsible journalists over at the Columbia City Paper, was revealed to FITSNews today in an incredibly ironic fashion - by one of their own regular sources during a leak of information targeting South Carolina’s Lieutenant Governor.

The fun and games started this morning when FITSNews received an anonymous tip implying that Lt. Gov. André Bauer might be implicated in the same cocaine ring that snared former State Treasurer Thomas Ravenel last summer.

After speaking with the source of the tip - a former Sanford administration official with close ties to the governor’s Washington D.C.-based political consultant - we were told that the same information concerning Bauer had also been provided to Hutchins and Wolfe through their website, A Sunny Place for Shady People.

Interestingly enough, instead of publishing the Bauer rumor themselves, Hutchins and Wolfe posted an anonymous comment on our website this morning under the nom de plume “Harden Gervais,” which the pair use to sign all of the posts on their website.

The comment rehashed almost verbatim the same insinuations against Bauer that we received this morning, but declined to publish:

I’ve heard from those in the know that Bauer has a skeet problem on par with Ravenel’s. If he runs for a major office (gov or Senate), the oppo guys for his opponent would be all over that like white on, well, cocaine.

One of Bauer’s closest advisors told FITSNews today that any insinuation that the lieutenant governor is using - or has ever used - cocaine or any other illegal drug is “a defamation suit waiting to happen.”

“You tell those bastards let’s go right now,” the source said. “André is ready to disprove these anonymous smears.”

A source close to Gov. Mark Sanford said this afternoon that the Governor’s Office has “absolutely no connection whatsoever” with the leak against Bauer, adding that the former gubernatorial advisor who is spreading the rumors needs to “stop freelancing before he gets all of us in trouble.”

Comments