Guest Post by Morbo
Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab became obsessed with searching for a great white whale. These days, some right-wingers are obsessing over the “great whitey tape.” Ahab’s search led him to a bad end, and I suspect the right wingers’ will as well.
If you’re just joining us, the “great whitey tape” (GWT) is an alleged recording of Michelle Obama at a conference in Chicago ranting about how “whitey” has done a lot of bad things to African Americans. As the legend goes, she was standing alongside Louis Farrakhan when she said this. Or maybe his wife. Or his sister. Or maybe his third cousin twice removed from Hoboken.
Promotion of the GWT started out as the project of a small nest of Obama-hating Clinton partisans, led by Larry Johnson. They were sure it was going to surface any day and destroy Obama’s campaign. Johnson apparently had plans to unveil the tape, but then took to saying he had merely talked to people who had heard it. I first heard about it this week, but the Carpetbagger has assured me that rumors about the GWT have been circulating for months.
Now right-wingers are getting in on the act. Alleged transcripts can be found on Free Republic, and the National Review Online’s blog has fixated on the matter lately, although writer Jim Geraghty seems skeptical.
A few people claim to have heard the tape. They describe it as “explosive” or “jaw-dropping.” But no one ever seems able to lay hands on it. That’s a good sign that it doesn’t exist.
This is an age where just about everything everybody does ends up on You Tube, yet something this shocking remains in the same class as the Loch Ness Monster — lots of claimed sightings but no corpse.
Some bloggers seem to think the tape may exist but argue that Obama was saying “why’d he” (in a reference to Bush), not “whitey.” It’s an interesting argument but irrelevant as long as we have no tape.
Some advice for the kooks: Ahab’s obsession put him in a bad place; don’t go there.
Instead of praying for bigfoot to ride out of the Pacific Northwest in a UFO bearing the Michelle Obama tape, maybe you guys should engage Barack Obama on the issues. Try explaining to the American people why your guy McCain and the Republican Party have a great plan for the country. Tell us why you deserve to retain control of the White House. Defend President George W. Bush and defend his achievements. Explain why they are worth preserving and indeed continuing. Let us know why you’re better than Obama and the Democrats. Try winning an election on issues, not mud-slinging.
Or are you afraid?
Post Script: Given the evidence, the non-existent tape appears to be a work of fiction. In this case, I mean that literally — the rumors appear to have originated in a novel, published two years ago, about an African-American presidential candidate seeking the Democratic nomination. In the fictional story, the candidate’s enemies find a video of the presidential hopeful telling a radical black minister how he will “f**k whitey” if elected.
Greg Sargent and Eric Kleefeld concluded, “If this was the basis for the rumor, Obama was forced to respond not just to a rumor, but to one that was consciously based on a published work of fiction. Welcome to General Election 2008, everyone!”
