I Feel Dirty, But I Have to Say It....

Rumor mongering is the dark underbelly of the already sordid business that is politics. When victory seems elusive, the desperate will fabricate and fan the fictitious to the fearful, who get flimflammed. Disgusting, right? But here are two “rumors” that were originally denounced as “completely despicable.”

Jim McGreevy and Larry Craig are gay.

Uh, yeah, these rumors don’t seem so “baseless” now, do they?

While false rumors can demolish people’s careers, every hidden truth starts as a rumor. Hadn’t we all heard rumors that an intern told a friend she had a tryst with the President long before we knew about a DNA-enhanced blue dress that cinched the deal?

By definition, a rumor is just an unverified statement about something or someone. In application, a political rumor can be lethal and deliciously Machiavellian. In an internet environment, knowing how, or if, to disseminate and how, or if, to respond is part of the political tactician’s toolbox.

Come along class. Professor IPOPA knows of a doozy floating around the internet that serves as a perfect case study.

Go to Google. Type in “Michelle Obama” and “railing against Whitey.” I did this three days ago, and I got 950 links. I did it this morning, and I got 21,500. Welcome to the information superhighway and all its viral tendencies.

What is this about, Professor?

A blogger named Larry Johnson (www.noquarterusa.net), an adamant opponent of Barack Obama, claims that four Republican sources have told him that Karl Rove possesses a videotape of Michelle Obama “railing against Whitey” at her church. One of the sources claims that Rove is showing it to big money donors while telling them that the RNC will wait to unveil it (a/k/a “the October Surprise”) after Obama gets the nomination and starts to gain traction. Wait, it gets better. Apparently, a Republican billionaire who cannot stand McCain has allegedly offered a million dollars for a copy of the video so that Obama’s people can do damage control in advance of its airing.

Here’s the post that started it all:

http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/05/16/will-barack-throw-mama-from-the-train/

So, let’s dissect the levels of deviousness that could be at play here.

If you are Clinton (or a Clinton supporter), you want this rumor out there, and you want it out there huge. Even Obama fans (IPOPA included) know another unflattering race-based disclosure, even from his wife, makes Obama unelectable. He can’t win. This rumor is an IV for Clinton’s barely-breathing campaign, which should make us all rather skeptical. Clinton’s been saying all along that she can get elected but Obama can’t. Without putting the campaign’s imprimatur on this, Clinton’s people are praying it gets wide circulation, I assure you. But they might not want it to rise to the level where it gets refuted because Clinton’s folks probably doubt its veracity, and at best, they can only say they don’t know for sure. In other words, Clintonites want the “whisper campaign” to doom Obama while praying that their hoped for truth comes out.

If you are a Republican or a McCain supporter, you’ve just “gone fishin.” There are three sets of statements that are either true of false:

(1) Michelle Obama either did or did not “rail against Whitey” at her church;

(2) Republicans either do or do not have this on tape; and

(3) Michelle Obama either has or has not referred to white people collectively as “Whitey” in her lifetime.

If 1 and 2 are true, somebody in the R camp has screwed up. You would definitely want to keep a lid on this. If it breaks too soon, now you’ve got Clinton against McCain, and she'll dust him in the debates.

BUT let’s say you don’t have one or two, but you think, having read Michelle Obama’s thesis or going on Rove’s gut that she’s “militant." What if you just thought she MIGHT HAVE said something like this before. How would you make that come forth without real evidence? Well, one thing you might do is fabricate a rumor that you have something on tape while saying you’re not going to show it. If the rumor gains enough traction, at some point, it will go from viral to mainstream, and somebody somewhere is going to ask Obama about the tape specifically.

If Obama responds narrowly by saying, “My wife never used the term “whitey” in the pulpit,” the follow up will be, “Did she EVER use it?” Now, Michelle Obama is in a position of having to make a categorical denial that she has NEVER said “Whitey,” even in jest. While review of thousands of web pages helped me conclude that the word “Whitey” is mostly used by white people when they are making mocking comments about what they believe angry black people call them behind their backs, I’m sure more black people have said “whitey” in jest than Whitey thinks.

This is why, if you are Obama, you might be hoping that Al Gore does something to make the internet disappear as quickly as he created it. To acknowledge this rumor as anything more than cranksterism gives it legitimacy, and you’ll spend the rest of the campaign responded to every allegation that you are really an alien from a neighboring galaxy, or that you had a secret lunch with bin Laden at a Manhattan bistro last week. But to not deny it outright might give it ongoing “viral” life instead of smacking it down with internet Zithromax.

But that’s ingeniousness of the rumor in the first place. By NOT denying it, Obama will have people like me who now wonder. If she’s never said it, why not say so? That ends the madness, right?

And also by not denouncing this weirdness, you are able to speculate about “ulterior motives” in everything Obama does. I have to say that when Obama made the VERY strong comments cautioning the Republicans about attacking his wife, I thought, “This can’t be just about what the Tennessee Republican Party is doing” (showing film clips of Michelle’s “first time I’ve been proud to be an American” remark) because he is referring to the fall. It DID seem like Obama was expecting a much more diabolic attack in the fall.

Maybe like his wife in a pulpit.

I Feel Dirty, But I Have to Say It....