Smearing Obama Is a Popular Pastime

Until recently, the golden rule for a presidential candidate who was being maligned was that it was best not to react to it.

When the slander was furiously denied, for example, the denial itself became a legitimate target for the serious press to pursue and write about. Moreover, this reinforced the notion that “there is always something true about such a rumor.”

13 Illegitimate Children

Whoever puts the myth in circulation that McCain has 13 illegitimate children running around in Vietnam, can certainly count on it that those who become aware of this rumor will reason, ”Well, 13 is perhaps too many, but 3 or 4 of those Vietnamese children is quite possible.” This does not make the rumor any less false, but the damage has been done.

However, Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, has departed from the established practice of “no comment.” The day after he won the primaries, a McClatchy press reporter asked whether his wife Michelle really had used the word “whitey.”

That word has approximately the same connotation as the word “nigger” when used by a white person to refer to an African-American.

Strong Anger

This provoked strong anger in Obama. The same night he gave his staff orders to put the “antiaircraft guns” in place. Opening of the website fightthesmears.com, is an attempt to, as much as possible, get ahead of gossip and untruths about the Obama family and then disprove them. Next to each defamatory item, the site announces what the truth is according to the candidate.

According to Time, fightthesmears.com is in part intended as a tour guide to the sensational rumors about the Obama family that are making the rounds on the web. The rumor that Obama took the oath of office as a U.S. Senator in 2005 with his hand on the Quran is again refuted with a photo of the young representative from Illinois with his hand on the family Bible.

The site also has a tab where Obama supporters and kind souls can make his campaign staff aware of any new, nasty rumors.

Stormfront.org

The other side doesn’t sit still either. The Washington post writes about a certain Don Black from Palm Beach, Florida, who spends sixteen hours every day reading hundreds of messages where Obama is called everything that is ugly. Nearly everything is to be found on this website. All this under the motto “white pride world wide.”

Black is a former KKK leader. Messages on the site mournfully proclaim that with Obama the end of white society draws near and the beginning of multicultural coexistence is approaching. Stormfront followers fear that Obama will make whites the “new minority.” “Many who have never regarded themselves as racist, are recently coming forward to us.” says Black.

Evil

It is an evil that goes even farther.

A bar in Georgia sells T-shirts with Obama’s campaign slogan below the image of a monkey, and in New York bumper stickers are being distributed on a small scale that read: “White People, Wake Up.”