First there was the “whitey tape” which would have allegedly confirmed that Michelle Obama was an angry Black militant. Larry Johnson, ex-CIA analyst and currently a security consultant, initiated the rumor about the tape. The rumor spread all over the internet and on to mainstream media. That tape was never produced as David Weigel wrote back in May of this year:
Johnson posted a video of a then-current Tennessee Republican ad attacking Michelle Obama, then continued his argument.
The post drew more than 600 comments and kicked off three heated weeks of blog-driven rumormongering which I recapped at the time for The American Prospect. One year later, no such tape has ever surfaced.
Then there was/is the “birther” controversies which in actuality has splintered into a few factions. We list three here:
- Birth Certificate
- Birth location not in the United States
- Citizenship Status
Now there is a fake “Obama Thesis” story floating around. Actually it was intentionally spread so that right-wingers could react predictably, and react they did:
Okay, let’s get you up to speed on the incredibly true story about how a bunch of right-wingers got taken in by some satiric blog post on Barack Obama’s college thesis, written ages ago, and frantically presented it as real.
Months ago, some blogger crafted a fake news story about how Time Magazine’s Joe Klein had obtained ten pages of a thesis written by Barack Obama, in which he wrote about how the Constitution was “inherently flawed.”
In the paper, in which only the first ten pages were given to the general media, Obama decries the plight of the poor: “I see poverty in every place I walk. In Los Angeles and New York, the poor reach to me with bleary eyes and all I can do is sigh.”In part, the future President blames this on the current economic system: “There are many who will defend the ‘free market.’ But who will defend the single mother of four working three jobs. When a system is allowed to be free at the expense of its citizens, then it is tyranny.”
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/23/fake-obama-thesis-story-g_n_332255.html
Will those desperate right wingers ever learn that for the most part people are tugging their chain just to elicit the inevitable hysteria that always follows one of these “revelations?
I hope you don’t mind an off topic comment. I was just thinking.
I was thinking about how the wingnuts keep saying this is a center right country when to me it so obviously is center left. That’s when I realized it depends on how you approach the topic.
If you put the ideologies of the electorate in a single line from left to right and then set the middle so that the left portion is the same length as the right portion then this is a center right country. That’s how the repugs see it.
But if you put all those whose ideologies are equal to or more liberal then President Obama on one end of a seesaw and all those who are more conservative on the other end, you would have to put the fulcrum center left to get it to balance. That’s how I see it.
I understand Glix’s point. But it seems to me that since the Supreme Court has so much final say, as the Supremes go, so does the country (at least until the Supremes catch up with the country.) Unfortunately the Supremes are for life, while the presidents who appoint them are for four year terms. So there is an inherent lag between where the country might be and where the Supremes might be ideologically.
So we end up now with a center left country, being directed in large part by a FAR right (IMO) Supreme Court.
I’m tickled pink by the Obama thesis hoax, though.
Imagine how paranoid the wingnuts will be when it comes to spouting more “breaking news” about Obama.
They will now have to check and double check to make sure their sources are not merely “breaking wind.”
LTL: They will now have to check and double check to make sure their sources are not merely “breaking wind.”
I doubt seriously if they will EVER vet any of the negative info that comes out about Obama, his wife or members of his administration. The mere fact that they think they’ve discovered some salacious dirt on Obama, et al will make them run with the story regardless of past failures to prove the stories true.
Glix, in my opinion, once the Supremes crossed the line and “selected” a POTUS (then determines that the case will be a one of a kind situation and they will never address the issue again…what gaul), the country simply went “right of center” for a very long time. It was only after 8 years of failure of that “selected” president, did the majority in this country realize that the Supremes and the 2004 re-election of the incumbent were a huge mistake. Enter…”Change you can believe in…”
Yes, I see your point. I was more conservative back in the 70′s but then I was less informed too. I think the rightwing has been spinning us for decades (maybe forever) and it worked for a long time because we were so trusting. Nixon broke some of that trust but not until Bush did we really begin to see behind the scenes.
Now I’ve thrown in my lot with the Democrats, planted my flag firmly on liberal soil so to speak.