Free Republic

In 1828, President John Quincy Adams's reelection campaign reportedly traded on innuendoes that Rachel Jackson had been imperfectly divorced from her first husband. Since her second husband, Andrew Jackson, once killed a man in a duel for the same insult to his wife's honor, Adams was perhaps lucky to lose no more than the presidency to Old Hickory. So, while there are abundant signs that Republicans this year are itching to take the practice to new lows, let's not forget that attacks on first ladies, actual or putative, go back a long way. And for all of the fear in...

How a onetime hero of the liberal blogosphere and the Democratic Party spread perhaps the most damaging anti-Obama smear of the primary. On May 13, 2006, Larry C. Johnson -- former CIA intelligence officer, counterterrorism pundit, classmate of Valerie Plame -- put up a breaking post claiming that Karl Rove was under federal indictment for perjury and lying to investigators looking into the leaking of Plame's identity. "Rove Indicted," Johnson blogged. "Frog march the bastard. As Freddie Mercury sang, 'another one bites the dust.'" The post linked to the investigative site TruthOut, and an anonymously sourced story that it turned...

The Michelle Obama Rant Tape was filmed between June 26th - July 1st 2004 in Chicago, IL at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Conference at Trinity United Church: specifically the Women's Event. Michelle Obama appeared as a panelist alongside Mrs. Khadijah Farrakhan and Mrs. James Meeks. Bill Clinton spoke during the Conference, as did Bill Cosby and other speakers, but not at the panel Michelle attended. Michelle Obama spoke at the Women's Event, but referenced Bill Clinton in her rant --- his presence at the conference was the impetus for her raving, it seems. For about 30 minutes, Michelle Obama launched into...

MIDI - DON'T MAKE ME OVER

Michelle Obama's eyes flicker tentatively even as she offers a trained smile. As her campaign plane arcs over the Flathead Range in Montana, she is asked to consider her complicated public image. Conservative columnists accuse her of being unpatriotic and say she simmers with undigested racial anger. A blogger who supported Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton circulates unfounded claims that Obama gave an accusatory speech in her church about the sins of "whitey." Obama shakes her head. "You are amazed sometimes at how deep the lies can be," she says in an interview. Referring to a character in a 1970s sitcom,...

Michelle and Allahpundit are right — if the media is going to write about the debunked "whitey" tape, particularly as a trigger for Obama's anti-smear site, there's really no excuse for not mentioning the two sources more responsible than anyone else for hyping the story: pro-Hillary blogger Larry Johnson and Democratic strategist Bob Beckel, who appeared on Fox News claiming a "mighty big shoe" was about to drop regarding Michelle Obama. (Now Beckel accuses conservatives of spreading rumors about her.) Did conservative bloggers write about the tape as well? Sure, but with varying degrees of skepticism. Allah finds the "conservative...

'Whitey' fails to wound Fellow slurs snicker at word's utterance Tribune staff report June 15, 2008 It's hard to come up with an ethnic slur that has less of a sting than "whitey." Are there really white people out there so ignorant of history, so unaware of the nuances of language and so threatened by minority grievances that they take genuine umbrage at the term "whitey"? To be truly offensive, a derogatory term needs to have an ominous context that "whitey" lacks. Those who take offense are confusing prejudice—which is making negative assumptions about people based solely on external characteristics,...

Barack Obama campaign starts new Web site to fight smears from political opponents at www.fightthesmears.com. The first smear mentioned: "LIE: Rush Limbaugh says a tape exists of Michelle Obama using the word 'whitey' from the pulpit of Trinity United." Well. No. This is what Limbaugh said: "The rumor is -- and we don't like dealing with rumors here -- but the rumor is that Michelle Obama from the pulpit of this church used the term 'whitey.' Some are saying be very careful with this because she might have said 'why'd he,' why did he, the contraction 'why'd he' instead of...

"Fightthesmears.com" could be "FighttheDiscussion.com" Democrat Barack Obama's campaign said Thursday that Michelle Obama never used the word "whitey" in a speech from the church pulpit as he launched a Web site to debunk rumors about his campaign." --NEDRA PICKLER, AP The Obama campaign is now going to be spending more time addressing rumors? "Yesterday I wrote about the new team that the Barack Obama campaign was building to counter internet rumor as well as deal with inconvenient truths, by way of offering the "party line" on how to counter the rumors or the damaging truths." --Susan Duclos, Wake Up America...

As long as there have been rumors in politics, there has been one widely accepted way for a candidate to deal with them. Basically, it's not to. Otherwise, according to prevailing wisdom, all a candidate achieves is to elevate the rumors to a legitimate story for the media to feast on. That don't-go-there approach was Barack Obama's plan for months until, on the candidate's first full day of campaigning as his party's presumed presidential nominee, a reporter from McClatchy Newspapers who was traveling aboard his plane asked him about a particularly toxic bit of hearsay that was zooming around the...

CNN contributor Roland Martin, a known Barack Obama sympathizer, surprisingly isn’t buying the argument that conservatives/Republicans are behind the rumored Michelle Obama "whitey" comment. During a segment on Thursday’s "Anderson Cooper 360," substitute anchor Campbell Brown asked Martin, "Republicans have made it clear, pretty much, that Michelle is fair game here. Are you surprised by the intensity of the attacks?" He replied, "I'm not surprised by it, but I think, also, we can't blame Republicans for everything. It's these idiot Democrats that started some of this stuff." When Brown asked what he meant by that, Martin dropped the names of...

Smear: LIE: Rush Limbaugh says a tape exists of Michelle Obama using the word "whitey" from the pulpit of Trinity United... Lie: Proven GOP sleazemeister Roger Stone says he has "credible evidence that some indelible record exists" of a tape of Michelle Obama using the term "whitey."

Campaign no longer ignoring Internet rumors about speech by Michelle -- it's launching Web site to push back WASHINGTON -- When I phoned the Obama press shop a few times in recent weeks to check out rumors about whether there was a videotape with Michelle Obama using the word "whitey," the campaign declined to issue a denial or to pass along the question to Michelle's staff to find out what might be fueling the rumors. That's been a standard tactic in dealing with the mainstream press. Unless there is some evidence, ignore the matter and reporters for mainstream outlets probably...

In that article (linked in the previous post) Karen Tumulty reports the Obama campaign learned of the rumor one full month before Larry Johnson did and ran it on his website! So clearly the Obama campaign has its own sources about this supposed tape. Now another blogger has torn apart the ‘truth’ posted on the Obama site and notes that the Obama site confirms Michelle Obama did speak at the Rainbow/Push convention!

Michelle Obama Says “Whitey” On a Tape Lie: On May 30th, Rush Limbaugh said he had heard a rumor that a tape exists of Michelle Obama using the word “Whitey” from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ. Truth: No such tape exists. Michelle Obama has not spoken from the pulpit at Trinity and has not used that word. Lie: Blogger Larry Johnson wrote on May 31st that he would add “New and dramatic developments. This is a heads up. I’ll post the news Monday morning by 0900 hours. Now I know why people who have seen the videotape...

Obama campaign: Wife never used the word 'Whitey' By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer 21 minutes ago Democrat Barack Obama's campaign said Thursday that Michelle Obama never used the word "whitey" in a speech from the church pulpit as he launched a Web site to debunk rumors about himself and his wife. The rumor that Michelle Obama railed against "whitey" in a diatribe at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ has circulated on conservative Republican blogs for weeks and was repeated by radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. The rumor included claims of a videotape of the speech that would...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has launched a Web site to dispel rumors about his faith and patriotism and his wife's views on race that have dogged his candidacy for more than a year.

Obama site confronts rumors 16 minutes ago Democrat Barack Obama's campaign said Thursday that Michelle Obama never used the word "whitey" in a speech. The campaign has created a new Web site to debunk rumors about the Obamas, http://www.fightthesmears.com. The rumor that Michelle Obama used the word "whitey" in a diatribe at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, and that a videotape exists, has circulated on conservative Republican blogs for weeks and was repeated by radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. The church, from which the Obamas recently resigned, had been home to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who came...

If everybody in America saw this video -- that really makes it clear, in his own words, how much Barack Obama despises white people -- he'd lose in a landslide. PS: Just in case you were wondering, this was apparently put together by a Hillary supporter and it is extremely powerful. (The video is at the link)

    A commenter clued me in on a site called Ex-Hillary Supporters For John McCain and some comments left by the site owner Ed recently about the “Whitey” Michelle Obama tape. He purports to have heard two minutes of the tape over the phone. Here he is answering questions from visitors on this site: Yes, I heard about 2 minutes of her ranting at Bill Clinton and Hillary over the phone. Ed Yes, it is a DVD, I only heard the audio part, they would not send me a sample. I understand that it is over 30 minutes long...