Since the beginning of January I’ve been following the different attacks on Obama. They have something in common in that they start as rumors on the great internets. I’m the last person to say the internet isn’t useful for information, but the problem is that the stories start and then migrate.
Eric Zorn at one point said something to the effect that it isn’t 1997–but in 1997 this had already been occurring for several years, just with different technology and it was a bit slower. The Elder Bush having an affair. Clinton doing just about everything and anything.
Already this crap started to infiltrate the regular news media. Now, it happens really fast–take the Obama’s church advocates black supremacy. I found it in late December and posted it on January 2nd pointing out how incredibly dumb the story was, but that it would be the next story after the madrassa lies.
Some of it is simply decentralized crap–I take my Jerry Weller story as that and still feel like a huge dumbass for it. But I apologized, corrected it and bring it up to point out I don’t expect people to be perfect, but the serial lying that is going on isn’t just a bunch of isolated mistakes, but a clear and coherent strategy to attack politicians and get the press to put the allegations into print even if as denials.
Look at Tom Roeser and Illinois Review as great examples. Only yesterday, Illinois Review had John Ruskin claiming that Obama never fully explained his attendance at a madrassa. Of course, Obama attended a public school referred to as a sekhola and there couldn’t have been any Wahhabist funding as Ruskin claimed because that didn’t start happening in foreign schools (and the school in question is public anyway) until years later. Roeser is still blaming Obama for not being forthright even though Obama had written about the school in his books and only some crackpots raised any concern about it.
Look at the claims that Obama attends a black supremacist church. It was started by Fran Eaton at the Illinois Review and it made it into a Trib article with people warning that Obama had to fully explain the beliefs–even though I found an explanation on the Church’s web site.
Look at the smear yesterday on Senate Majority Leader Debbie Halvorson from the same site.
There’s a theme here and it’s replayed over and over again in different settings. There is an infrastructure that gets right wing memes covered and the press covers it. As I’ve said, the Weller thing happened the other way and I was largely at fault for that, but there’s a key difference in that I issue corrections and apologize and don’t keep the lies alive. How many more times during this campaign are we going to be hearing about Obama having some tie to Islamist elements? Or that he attends a far left church? Or that the Democrats had some guy who stood with Paul Wolfowitz say a prayer and so clearly the Democrats are crazy?
UPDATE: And let’s not forget the post comparing Obama to Barbaro on Illinois Review just as they were putting Barbaro down/Update
Part of this is Democrats’ fault for not fighting back consistently, but part of it is a realization of what the game is on the right wing now. We had the attacks on Kerry with Malkin claiming Kerry got his purple heart by shooting himself. Chris Mathews called her on it, but she still shows up on my teevee. Why?
We have CNN covering a lie about Nancy Pelosi and ‘her’ requests for a bigger jet even though non-partisan House staff already pointed out the story is false.
Why is this crap being allowed to make the news? It’s not that some innocent mistakes are made, it’s that even when shown wrong, the stories continue along without ever being corrected and make it into the news over and over again.
The Tribune did a long rebuttal to the Swift Boating of Kerry. It was authoritative. How many of these sites still tell that story is true?
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Daniel Biss