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?

31 thoughts on “The Problem”
  1. You know…

    That you complain about the quality of the press, I’m there with you. ‘They’ do what could only be described as a terrible job, reporting…well, about anything.

    However…

    I note that you didn’t include the Bush air Guard, Dan Rather fake documents story on your list. Reason?

    Also not on the list was the media ‘sitting’ on the Mark Folly story for months, only to release it in the days right before the election.

    Are there limits to your outrage?

  2. A Tribune editor who was at one of the skirmishes in the Swift Boat book disputed the book’s account of that skirmish. That editor had never been interviewed before and declined to be interviewed for the book. He was one of 23 officers who served with Kerry in that region. Of those 23, 17 supported the book. Even if that editor is completely accurate, it only discredits a small part of the book. And there are those who give a different account than the editor. So while the Tribune story was compelling, it was no more compelling than differing accounts the mainstream media completely ignored.

  3. Wow, you missed the entire point of the post.

    “the media sitting on the Foley” story presumes the media is some monolith that sits around and discusses when to release a story. Your conspiracy theory is just another bullshit story that right wing blogs have cooked up.

    In terms of the Dan Rather story, it is a very different case–it’s one where apparently fakes were given to them.

    Compare that to Obama’s story where the evidence to make the story seem reasonable was….nothing.

    That you can’t see the difference is rather telling of the problem and why I used the elder Bush affair story. Furthermore, CBS actually retracted the story where as conservative blogs continue to run the lies regardless of how many times they are disproven.

  4. Actually, from what I can find, the Nancy Pelosi story is true.

    She is requesting a larger plane…larger than the one used by Hastert, but SFO is further than ORD.

    She has also, requested clarification as to the rules of use. Who can fly with her and the like…okay I guess.

    Both the Washington Post and the Washington Times stories had the same basic facts in them, only they did have two different spins…with the Times carrying more GOP quotes and the Post covering more Democrats (surprise!)

    CNN? Who knows? Who cares? The Fox News story has parts from both the Post and the Times.

  5. T Square brings up some good points.

    The Bush-TANG story (for which CBS producers were fired and their main anchor resigned) held a host of oddities in and of itself. If the documents were indeed forgeries, how is it that not only a single conservative was so adept at forgeries he noticed it right away (literally within seconds of the broadcast) but then that the information this single conservative held was transmitted globally within the same 24-hour news cycle? A whole lot of coincidences and networking had to fall into place in order for all that to happen.

    As far as T Square’s query about the Mark Foley story not breaking, it is true that the media (at least some Florida newspapers and Fox News among others) knew about the allegations against Foley in 2005, a year before the story broke. At that time, each of the media outlets refused to publicize the story for fear of appearing “partisan”.

    This is strange since “appearing partisan” is how the conservatives now describe that story once it finally did break.

    As for the timing, one of the pages that Foley harassed came forward to ABC News. As an independent source, ABC corroborated this former page’s story and then aired it.

    The timing, in essence, was determined by that former page who came forward (he was sponsored by a Republican while in the page program, if I recall) … not necessarily ABC News which simply ran the reports when they had them.

    …By the by, y’all will be happy to know Dennis LaComb, Fran Eaton, et al (I’m sure with the encouragement of “John Ruskin” and Jill Stanek, both of whom generally deleted my posts anyway) finally banned me from Illinois Review.

    It’s good to see that instead of trying to defend the (mis)information they publish they’d rather simply ban people who dare to post facts and question their misinformation and spin.

  6. A question:

    Do you hold the ‘big’ media to a different(higher) standard than the blogs*?

    Just asking…

    *blogs other than yours

  7. ==it was no more compelling than differing accounts the mainstream media completely ignored.

    Which plays the game of trying to equate someone who was actually there and people who were farther away. In what world is it that the best witness is the one that is ignored because you want to believe otherwise?

    O’Neil lied that 60 people helped write the book.

    n fact, only one man who served on John Kerry’s boat, Stephen Gardner, is involved with Swift Boat Vets or Unfit for Command. While the group’s members are veterans of the Vietnam War and may have served at the same time as Kerry or even on boats near Kerry’s, only one man who served on John Kerry’s boat, Stephen Gardner, is involved with Swift Boat Vets or Unfit for Command. And Gardner was not present for the events that led to any of Kerry’s medals or any of Kerry’s three Purple Hearts.

    Why is it so important to keep these lies alive?

  8. Ummm..how about the Sergeant at Arm:

    STATEMENT BY SERGEANT AT ARMS

    In December 2006, I advised Speaker Pelosi that the US Air Force had made an airplane available to Speaker Hastert for security and communications purposes following September 11, 2001.

    I told Speaker Pelosi that Speaker Hastert used the Air Force plane for travel to and from his district, however, I was uncertain of the rules and guidelines governing use of the plane. I offered to call the U.S. Air Force and Department of Defense to seek clarification of the guidelines.

    Subsequently, several members of the Speaker’s staff and members of the Office of the Sergeant at Arms met with representatives from the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the U.S. Air Force liaison office to discuss the rules and guidelines which governed Speaker Hastert’s use of a plane. Several questions were posed to the Air Force and we are awaiting a response.

  9. Arch:

    I saw that, in both the Post and the Times…

    She IS asking for a bigger plane… that is a fact. That she has, by my thinking a good reason, is also true. That she is asking about who she can have travel with her is fine…as I said.

    That the GOP is making a big deal out of it, that’s what they do.

    Take a breath…

  10. T Square,

    The story was thoroughly vetted and corroborated before airing. You’d be complaining if they ran it in May that they didn’t vet the accuracy of the story (just as you complained about CBS’ Bush-TANG report).

    You can’t simultaneously want the news media to run everything as soon as they have AND want them to verify everything before running it….

    Arch, it is important to keep these stories alive because people will believe what they want to believe and the mental dissonance when facts contradict beliefs is too strong for some to bear. Psych studies have shown this repeatedly.

    …I suggest you prepare an actual print column and submit it as a guest op-ed to the Trib, Sun-Times, etc. They’ve all been guilty of feeding the rumor mill at one time or another.

    Facts should not be relative things.

  11. Several news services failed to report on the messages, but most of all, the Republican Congress knew and didn’t do anything. And yet you criticize the media.

    There was a simple way to avoid the press breaking the story right before an election–ensure the kids in the program were safe.

    But what’s most bizarre about this logic is that somehow the press was being anti-Republican by not publishing information that hurt Republicans. So in one case, you think they were too cautious to hurt Republicans (Foley), but in the document case they were too careless.

    You have established a wonderful position that fits every case you can possibly identify. No matter what, the press is attacking Republicans.

  12. Apparently it’s okay for the GOP to lie about her use of the plane claiming it’s unprecedented and for the press to pass that crap along?

    I’m curious about the standard here. The first story indicated it was at her request only, and not, as it is the case, the Sergeant at Arms followed up by quotes about how unprecedented it was even though it wasn’t unprecedented at all.

    So if someone says it, it’s fine to print it.

  13. biggest problem: the msm is too lazy to follow up stories and have just become stenos.
    maybe if they did their jobs and did the follow ups this would not happen so much.

  14. “There was a simple way to avoid the press breaking the story right before an election…” – Archpundit

    I would end that with (also) … to have the republicans come forward when they FIRST knew about the problem with Foley and the pages. That would have eliminated ANYONE ELSE using Foley-gate at an opportunistic time. But perhaps the republicans were hoping no one else knew about the page problem, thus they could just continue to ignore it. Only when they were caught, as usual, did they start whining about WHEN the FACTS came out.

  15. Archpundit,

    I think a one of the more clever tactics the right uses is called search engine optimization. That’s where certain words and word combinations are selected in headlines or brief posts to lure people to certain content. For example, if someone Googles “Obama” and “Islam,” what happens? The “Barbaro” one was just too easy/obvious.

    Advertisers and marketers invented it, along with some help from search engines themselves. As far as infrastructure for the right’s ability to distribute their memes, it’s brilliant.

    They do this to drive web searchers to their sites so that they get the chance to foist these lies on enough unsuspecting visitors to carry a meme/theme, whatever you want to call these lies, in a coordinated, strategic communications program.

    As for the complicit and dreadful news “reporting,” everyone here should visit beachwoodreporter.com daily.

    NW Burbs: Thanks for working the IL Review beat for so long, and for doing it so well.

  16. Some of the Swift vets directly witnessed some of the events in question. Kerry could have cleared up most of these questions by releasing his full medical file and he refused. Why?
    Much of the Swift vets’ complaints centered on Kerry’s comments after he came back to the US. The most powerful ad featured Kerry’s own testimony before Congress. How is that unfair for those men to say they felt betrayed by Kerry. They said it at the time!

  17. He did in 2005 to three news organizations who said they were consistent with what Kerry and others have said.

    Why didn’t he do it before? Kerry is an idiot, but that’s not an excuse for people to keep lying about his record in Vietnam.

    =====Much of the Swift vets’ complaints centered on Kerry’s comments after he came back to the US. The most powerful ad featured Kerry’s own testimony before Congress. How is that unfair for those men to say they felt betrayed by Kerry. They said it at the time!

    As Charles Madigan said, nothing, however, the SBV went further and claimed he was lying about his record and to date the records and the vast majority of first person accounts are consistent with Kerry’s statements.

  18. Sorry, releasing to three friendly news organizations who are on his side on this issue doesn’t sway me. If they find something damning and print it, it makes their organizations look like tankers for ignoring the story originally. Kerry is the one who made his service the centerpiece of his campaign. That means his service deserves close scrutiny. The swift boat veterans all signed affadavits. If they were lying, why doesn’t someone sue them? Your party is bought and paid for by trial lawyers. My guess is that if you pull back the curtain fully, you’ll find quite a bit of truth in what the swift boat veterans were saying. It’s just easier, I guess, to say they were discredited and move on. I watched quite a few of the interviews with John O’Neill and he wiped the floor with all of them.

  19. ===My guess is that if you pull back the curtain fully, you’ll find quite a bit of truth in what the swift boat veterans were saying. It’s just easier, I guess, to say they were discredited and move on. I watched quite a few of the interviews with John O’Neill and he wiped the floor with all of them.

    Dan, who signed affidavits that actually saw what was going on? Gardner is the only one who served directly with Kerry who contradicts any of the story. And he wasn’t present for any of the incidents which are in dispute. So how does signing affidavits do any good in discrediting Kerry?

    The paper record backs Kerry’s story. The closest eyewitnesses and the guy he plucked out of the water back Kerry’s version.

    The notion that the medical records are a big deal only occurs if you find any merit in the claims of people who are contradicted by eyewitness accounts and Navy records–which happen to be largely consistent with each other.

    Give me something specific I’m supposed to believe based on the documentary evidence or actual eyewitness accounts that might make me ‘find quite a bit of truth’. I’ve read and listened to accounts of these stories more than I care to remember, but I never found O’Neill credible since he never was able to produce documentary evidence or eyewitnesses that were there and contradict Kerry and everyone else there.

  20. On one of the medals, the doctor who examined Kerry said he barely was wounded at all and laughed when he asked to considered for a purple heart. There were several other soldiers who spoke to this.
    On the incident where kerry pulled the guy from the water, there were a number of swift boat witnesses in the other boats: thurlow, chenoweth, odell, pease. I may have be off on some spellings. They all dispute much of the official account. that’s why the records were so important. I can go on if you’d like. The point is that a significant number of people around kerry believe he betrayed them after the war and that the official record of his bravery is highly inflated through a careful manipulation and then guarding of the records. These guys aren’t all Republicans. O’Neill is a Democrat. If so many of them feel that way, doesn’t that count for something? They signed affidavits and stood up and told their stories. Kerry only told his story behind the firewall of a friendly biographer and a selected release of records. Kerry did commercials on his vietnam service and had it within his power to clear all this up by releasing the records fully and doing a few press conferences. If he truly was smeared it would have been easy to smash it to pieces. The fact that he didn’t stands as a powerful statement to me.

  21. http://www.cjrdaily.org/politics/hurt_in_the_fog_of_war.php
    ===As Lt. Mike Kafka, a U.S. Navy spokesman, told us yesterday, in line with official U.S. Navy documentation, wounded combatants neither nominate nor award themselves Purple Hearts. The Purple Heart is awarded only after a commander determines that a soldier or sailor has incurred a wound inflicted by the enemy and forwards a recommendation to his superiors.

    One paragraph later, Hurt errs more explicitly, writing that it was the award of his third Purple Heart on March 13, 1969, “that let Mr. Kerry request a transfer out of Vietnam and into a desk job eight months before his tour expired.” Again, as we noted yesterday, Navy regulations at the time specified that any trooper wounded three times be reassigned outside of Vietnam (soldiers, including Kerry, did get to request specific new assignments). Such a reassignment could be stopped only by a soldier’s request.

    Dan, soldiers don’t ask to be considered for the Purple Heart and doctors don’t award them.

    ===I may have be off on some spellings. They all dispute much of the official account. that’s why the records were so important.

    You are completely confusing the lies Dan–the issue in the Rasmussen save was whether Kerry fled and whether there was fire at the time he pulled Rasmussen out. Even though Thurlow claimed it didn’t happen like that, the documentary evidence from Thurlow’s citation states it exactly as Rasmussen, Kerry, Sandusky, and Langoffer. One guy recanted saying he didn’t understand the affidavit. The records were released on this incident and they support Kerry.

    ===O’Neill is a Democrat.
    Dan, do you check anything the SBV claimed?


    “Media Matters for America has extensively documented O’Neill’s long-standing Republican ties. (As a guest on Scarborough Country, MSNBC senior political analyst Lawrence O’Donnell Jr. noted that both O’Neill and Buchanan have ties to the GOP that date back to Chuck Colson and the Nixon administration: “I’m wondering if you [Buchanan] met him in 1971 when he [O’Neill] was in the Oval Office with Richard Nixon planning his first criticism of John Kerry. There is a great picture that MSNBC News has that I’ve been looking at with Chuck Colson, President Nixon and John O’Neill planning his debate then with John Kerry. And there is another pair of shoes in the frame, Pat [Buchanan]. I can’t tell if they are your shoes or not. I don’t know.” “They might have been. They might have been,” Buchanan replied.) FactCheck.org noted that $100,000 of the $158,750 the group had raised as of June came from prominent Texas Republican and Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign contributor Bob Perry. As for O’Neill’s claim that members of the group “didn’t campaign for anybody,” The Boston Globe reported on August 7 that Elliott appeared with Kerry during his 1996 Senate reelection campaign “and defended Kerry, saying he deserved the Silver Star.”””

    ===If he truly was smeared it would have been easy to smash it to pieces. The fact that he didn’t stands as a powerful statement to me.

    It is a powerful statement to the fact that if you tell a lie enough, everyone starts to believe it. The documentary evidence and the people closest to each of these incidents agree with Kerry. O’Neil is a serial liar and Thurlow contradicts his own records. The ‘doctor’ in the ad didn’t even treat Kerry.

    This is the entire point of the post. If you tell it enough, people will believe it. Go over and look at Ruskin’s most recent post on Illinois Review saying Obama went to a madrassa. It’s factually incorrect, but within a few months it’ll be conventional belief in conservative circles.

  22. Media Matters for America is about as reliable as Pravda. It called me a “war blogger” recently and misstated my post about the AP stories quoting the mysterious officer named Jamal Hussein. Lawrence O’Donnell is a raving lunatic who had a mental breakdown on the air shouting at John O’Neill when he couldn’t speak calmly about the facts and then had to apologize afterwards. It’s no secret that Nixon sought out O’Neill because he already was speaking out against Kerry. Big deal. O’Neill already was ripping Kerry for his anti-war statements and was happy to continue doing so. That doesn’t make him a Republican. He’s a trial lawyer for god’s sake. That makes it nearly certain he’s a Democrat. O’Neill said he voted for Gore. We both don’t know the truth of that claim. Whatever you think of O’Neill, he has been entirely consistent for 35 years on this. He believes Kerry betrayed his fellow soldiers. He said the same thing on the Dick Cavett show in the early 1970s. You can call him a serial liar if you want but those are just hollow words. I watched O’Neill doing interviews and he sounded consistent and sincere. The only people who appeared irrational were Chris Matthews, Lawrence O’Donnell and Ted Koppel.

    As far as some of the records you allude to, that’s why the Swift Vets wanted to see ALL the records. It is their belief that Kerry hyped some of the after action reports. All Kerry had to do is release them and if he was right, he could have destroyed the story.

    I never said Kerry or the doctor give out the purple hearts. the doctor who treated him said kerry asked him to recommend him for a purple heart.

    Your point about the madrassa is not true. That little story barely made it out in the media and never penetrated much.

    I can’t personally vouch for any of the Swift Boat veterans’ stories, or Kerry’s for that matter. I can comment on the media mischaracterizing their contentions as being largely discredited. It’s just not true. And, again, I’ll make a point that apparently you don’t dispute. The true power of the Swift Boat Veterans was their genuine belief that Kerry betrayed them after the war. That’s what had an emotional impact on American voters. And the image of Kerry inventing atrocities in front of Congress in order to launch his political career.

    The stuff about the medals was probably hard for people to sort out and I’m sure independent minded people gave Kerry the benefit of the doubt on those points.

    But look at it objectively. These guys were challenging Kerry’s honor and the centerpiece moment in his life. Kerry just shrugged his shoulders, refused to release records and refused to answer questions about it. You can’t blame a voter for believing the Swift vets might be right.

  23. —But look at it objectively. These guys were challenging Kerry’s honor and the centerpiece moment in his life. Kerry just shrugged his shoulders, refused to release records and refused to answer questions about it. You can’t blame a voter for believing the Swift vets might be right.

    Two things, first the Media Matters site simply is a good place to find the placeholders for the stories–in these cases everything was reported in newspapers and fairly well covered.

    The last point, we don’t disagree that much–I can see how the average voter got that belief and Kerry was a crappy candidate for exactly this reason. It’s the same the truth will win out crap that the Dukakis campaign should have taught him to know better about.

  24. You’re right about Dukakis although in the case of the weekend furlough program, there aren’t many good responses when criminals on passes murder and rape people.

  25. Anonymous wrote: “NW Burbs: Thanks for working the IL Review beat for so long, and for doing it so well.”

    Telling the truth shouldn’t deserve a thank you, but you’re welcome.

    You’ll need to pick up that torch of truth though — Illinois Review finally decided they’d rather stew in their own broth of half-truths, innuendo and over-the-top malarkey.

    LaComb banned me after almost a year of allowing honest, if heated, debate. Spineless and pathetic.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if their next step is spending a few days to scrub off all my posts just out of spite.

    Jill “Apparently She Likes Porn” Stanek and John “Wouldn’t Know the Truth if it Bit Him in the Arse” Ruskin already have a head start since they’re so delete-happy.

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