But Fortune senior editor Dan Primack says Gawker’s huge dump is much ado about nothing.

However, before another word on the subject is said, it should be noted that neither the folks at POLITICO nor the folks at Gawker (nor this author) fully understand everything in these documents.

“These documents — not all of which are new — will require a great deal of vetting,” writes POLTICO’s Dylan Byers, eagerly adding that early “signs indicate that there are some new, and potentially controversial, details.”

“The documents are exceedingly complicated. We don’t pretend to be qualified to decode them in full, which is why we are posting them here for readers to help evaluate — please leave your thoughts in the discussion below,” Gawker’s John Cook writes.

Ouch. He goes on to critique and/or correct each of Gawker’s possible “finds” including:

Bain’s Cayman Islands accounts: “the reality is that most private equity firms form Cayman-domiciled funds to accommodate investors based outside of the United States (particularly when those funds also are making some non-U.S. investments).”
The fact that Romney’s retirement package involves companies created after he left Bain in 1999: “[H]is retirement package provided Romney with ownership positions in Bain funds raised for 10 years after he left the firm (plus the ability to co-invest his own money). This isn’t breaking news (mentioned here, for example).”
On the “mystery” surrounding Romney’s holdings: “There actually is plenty of data on Romney’s Bain-related holdings. For example, Bain’s own website lists most of its active private equity portfolio companies. Then there are third-party databases operated by such organizations as Dow Jones, Thomson Reuters and CapitalIQ — each one of which includes searchable lists of past Bain Capital deals (often with detailed financial information).”

“I totally understand why a stack of papers marked ‘confidential’ seems exciting, particularly for those without a deep understanding of private equity. And I‘m not taking any position on if Romney did or didn’t duck taxes at some point, either related or unrelated to Bain holdings. All I’m saying is that Gawker has posted tons of smoke without any fire,” Primach adds.

Apparently, nobody thought to tell the boys on the Romney beat that Gawker Media is part of a shell company incorporated in the Cayman Islands. Gawker’s money lives in the same neighborhood as Romney’s money. Call it bipartisanship.

As John Cassidy relates in The New Yorker, Gawker’s finances are “organized like an international money-laundering operation.” For example:

Much of its international revenues are directed through Hungary, where [bossman Nick] Denton’s mother hails from, and where some of the firm’s techies are located. But that is only part of it. Recently, [Felix] Salmon reports, the various Gawker operations—Gawker Media LLC, Gawker Entertainment LLC, Gawker Technology LLC, Gawker Sales LLC—have been restructured to bring them under control of a shell company based in the Cayman Islands, Gawker Media Group Inc.

In my mind, hypocrisy is a lesser sin than stupidity, and it is sort of stupid to write up a breathless account about Romney’s doing the precise same thing your company does. Incidentally, there is nothing in the Gawker report or the accompanying documents suggesting that Romney or Bain did anything improper. And neither did Gawker, for that matter: U.S. tax practices create very powerful incentives to pursue avoidance strategies. Gawker’s owners apparently know that, even if its writers lack the guts or the intellectual capability to acknowledge as much.

We eagerly await the next Gawker editorial on the need for corporate-tax reform.