I’m reasonably confident that Barack Obama is going to win the presidency in November, but I should admit, as foolish as it may sound, my biggest fear is the vicious rumor mill, where nonsense spreads quickly, and far too many decent people struggle to differentiate between fact and right-wing fiction.
One of my cousins emailed me this week with a link to a slick, professional-looking online video filled with right-wing “facts” about Obama, and even she — a Jewish Democrat in New Jersey who voted for Obama in her primary — started to wonder if maybe some of the smears are true. They’re not.
The question facing the campaign has been around for quite a while: ignore the trashy rumors (and possibly allow them to fester unchallenged) or debunk them (and possibly bring added attention to the lies, inadvertently lending them credence). As Time’s Karen Tumulty explained today, Obama is going with the latter with a new site called, “Fight the Smears.”
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. […]
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. But Obama is attempting to find the humor — and the votes — by taking the rumors head-on.
Apparently, talk of the non-existent “whitey” tape, lifted from a novel and pushed aggressively by an unhinged Clinton backer, prompted this pushback initiative.
It may be risky, but all things being equal, I think it’s the right way to go.
I had the same reaction to this as Michelle Cottle.
The crazies, nasties (think Roger Stone) and conspiracy theorists will only get crazier, nastier and more conspiracy-minded as this race goes on, and Obama can’t risk ignoring their blatherings — no matter how unbalanced the charges seem or how many times the campaign has pointedly refuted them. (For the last time, the man is not a Muslim and he is more than happy to recite the pledge of allegiance — hand over heart — for anyone who feels compelled to test his patriotism.)
Obama’s success will hinge in large part on his ability to soothe the gut-level, often subconscious fears of people who are skittish about him because they’re not quite sure if he’s “one of us.” To do this, he will have to be more aggressive than your average white-bread candidate with a boring white-bread name like John McCain. Better still, enlisting Obama’s online groundtroops in the effort seems in keeping with the grassroots, participatory nature of his campaign.
Indeed, as long as we’re talking about this, two relatively new smears have been making the rounds, which I wanted to knock down.
First, there’s been ridiculous chatter in right-wing circles demanding that Obama release his birth certificate to prove that he wasn’t born in Kenya. (Some variations of the smear insist that the birth certificate lists his middle name as Muhammad and his given first name was “Barry.”) Some cable talk shows have picked up the nonsense.
The campaign went ahead and released the birth certificate today and — what do you know — the conservative accusations about Obama are false. They always are.
Second, we should probably take a moment to talk about Larry Sinclair, some clown who made a YouTube video alleging that Obama did drugs and had oral sex with him in the back of a limousine in 1999.
Sinclair is a fringe character, but I bring him up because he’s actually scheduled to host an event at the National Press Club on Wednesday, June 18.
Now, Sinclair can make whatever wild accusations he wants, but it’s worth remembering that his story doesn’t stand up well to scrutiny (during an alleged rendezvous with Obama in Illinois, Sinclair was actually booked in Colorado), and as witnesses go, Sinclair is less than unimpeachable (he apparently has a lengthy criminal record).
It’s curious, though, that Sinclair will get the National Press Club as a platform — one needs a Press Club sponsor to host an event, raising questions about who, exactly, helped get Sinclair a room. For that matter, Sinclair now has a lawyer — Montgomery Sibley, who recently defended the “DC Madam” Deborah Jean Palfrey — and it’s curious how Sinclair can afford such a pricey attorney.
In other words, the steady stream of smears have been non-stop, but they’re not about to go away anytime soon.