Loading ...Jun
Fight the smears!
Anyone following politics this year is aware of the spread of vile rumors circulating on the Internet and via e-mail about Barack Obama and his wife Michelle. The e-mails usually accuse Obama of being a Muslim, of being unpatriotic, of being racist. Some also target Michelle. The rumors are completely false and have been debunked at invaluable places like Snopes. However, knowing that the news media loves to spread these rumors and will knowingly pass on information they either know to be false or should know to be false without comment, Senator Obama has decided to tackle this issue head-on with a new website. Karen Tumulty of Time magazine explains.
Obama told his top aides it was time for a more aggressive solution to the rumors that have been popping up on the Internet about him and his family for months. And so the Obama campaign has built what might best be described as a Web-based rumor clearinghouse, located at fightthesmears.com, in which it hopes all the shady stories about Obama’s faith, his family and his rumored connections with controversial figures can go to die.
Obama is enlisting his millions of supporters to help him hunt down and quash these stories, just as those supporters helped him turn his insurgent campaign into a history-making juggernaut. Says Obama adviser Anita Dunn: “We will not allow Michelle — or, for that matter, Barack—to be defined by rumors.”
…
Click on the claim that Obama attended a “radical madrasah,” for instance, and it takes you to a CNN feature on the very ordinary-looking elementary school he actually went to as a child in Indonesia. The rumor that Obama was sworn in to the U.S. Senate with the Koran yields a photo of him with his hand on a family Bible. Also featured are videos of Obama saying the Pledge of Allegiance, to combat claims that he refuses to. And, yes, the campaign plans to post a .pdf of Obama’s birth certificate. Near each rumor will be a fight-back button, offering suggestions as to where and how Obama supporters can call or e-mail to counter the rumors. The site will also have a spot where Obama supporters can alert the campaign to any new rumors they may be seeing on the Web or in their mailboxes or hearing on the telephone. Though the latest and most poisonous rumors about Michelle were ginned up by a pro-Clinton website, Obama knows that—notwithstanding John McCain’s pledge that his own campaign will not engage in smears—more rumors can be expected in a general-election campaign. Trying to kill them with oxygen and openness is a risky approach.
It is hard to see that Obama has much choice in the matter, so I applaud this innovative move. As all Democrats should know by now, the Republicans win elections by spreading false and malicious rumors. The GOP has learned that the media is not concerned with accuracy, it is concerned with seeming “balanced.” That’s why, for weeks, the media passed on accusations that John Kerry’s heroic war record in Vietnam was false and that he was a coward who had betrayed his comrades and even injured himself intentionally to get out of further service. These lies were all outrageous, all spread by paid agents of the GOP, and all contradicted by the official U.S. Navy records. Nevertheless, for weeks, the media relayed these smears to the public, portraying the lies as about as likely to be true as the official U.S. Navy record and the recollection of everyone who was there and NOT employed in some form by the Republican party or the campaign of George W. Bush.
The Obama camp has obviously learned from incidents such as this one. Only aggressive action by the campaign itself will protect the truth about the candidate. Relying on the media to see that the public learns the truth is the path of fools and losers.
Social Traffic Stats
Top 5 referring pages: