"It starts with a claim that’s ambiguous at best, fabricated at worst, and then interpreted in the most invidious possible light."

"The claim is reported in one outlet and amplified on Twitter. Other outlets then report on the report, repeating the claim over and over again. Talk radio picks it up. Maybe Fox News follows. Eventually the story achieves a sort of ubiquity in the right-wing media ecosystem, which makes it seem like it’s been confirmed. Soon it becomes received truth among conservatives, and sometimes it even crosses into the mainstream media. If you watched the way the Clintons were covered in the 1990s, you know the basics of this process. If you didn’t, you’re going to spend the next year—and maybe the next nine years—learning all about it."

Michelle Goldberg, on the Laugh Factory controversy. For the record, I was skeptical yesterday, when the story broke.

Goldberg talked to Jamie Masada, the owner of the Laugh Factory:

Masada told me that on Nov. 11, he got a call from a man named John—he doesn’t remember the last name—who sounded “distinguished, like an attorney.” John said he represented the Clinton campaign. He asked Masada “who had put him up” to posting the video. In a menacing voice, he told Masada, “This is not good for your business.” John then asked for the email or phone numbers of the five comedians who were featured in the video. “I told him, ‘Eff you,’ and I hung up,” says Masada.

How does Masada know that John was actually from the Clinton camp? He doesn’t. “I’m glad I’m not in politics or any of that stuff; you might know more than I do,” he says. “Maybe it was a prank, I have no idea. Was it real? Not real? I have no idea. He didn’t call back, that’s all I can say.”

This answers the main question I had. Was there a real threat? The words were not a threat and could be understood as an attempt to persuade. And, on the substance, it is persuasive: Don't brand Laugh Factory with a montage that seems put together to attack one political candidate whom a lot of potential customers like and, especially, don't attack a female with low-aiming jokes about how she's not a proper women within a sexist template that denigrates women who are not young, feminine, chaste, and heterosexual.

Ah, but it was said in "a menacing voice." A sophisticated threatener — "like an attorney" — would refrain from using words that state a threat, as in the classic "Nice family you got there"-type statement. So it's something. It is what it is. Maybe Masada can get the call traced. Who knows who this "John" character is. Let's try to keep our wits about us, eh?