How the Right Wing Smear Machine Works
Make no mistake, right-wing smears of Obama do not get into the mainstream media by accident.
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. Ben Smith, at The Politico, flags that today CNN’s running a ‘online poll’ asking if Barack Obama has enough patriotism to be president. As Ben, with some understatement, put it’s “it’s odd to see the mainstream media drive a largely whispered question that none of his main, named critics — Hillary, McCain, or the RNC — will touch.” Yeah, I’d say so.
That’s how it works. Starts at right-swing smear sites and hoax emails. Then the AP’s Nedra Pickler, who specializes in scooping up this slop and laundering it into the mainstream press, writes it up for the AP that runs across the country. And then picks it up and makes it a regular part of the campaign conversation.
I doubt some top exec at CNN came up with this or any name anchor. It’s some producer in the bowels of the operation. But it amounts to the same thing because it’s part of the culture and there’s no accountability.
Get ready for more.
Summary:
1) Starts at right-swing smear sites and hoax emails,
2) AP’s Nedra Pickler launders it into the mainstream press,
3) CNN or Newsweek, or time Magazine picks it up and makes it a regular part of the campaign conversation.
I would add
4) CNN, Newsweek, NYT then begin to run stories about the fact that “people are worried about __________” and they get quotes from Joe Biden saying that he is worried.
New mainstream media mandate: all leads and ideas must be vetted by snopes.com. It appears they are becoming the only ones to actually perform research on the leads.
I second that. My own mother was telling me something that her wingnut friend told her and I cut her off mid sentence pointing to snopes.com on the computer screen.
True patriots date strippers, cheat on their handicapped wife, leave her for a woman named Cindy Lou and, years later, have a close personal relationhip with a woman who looks remarkably like a younger Cindy Lou.
That my friends is the definition of a true patriot.
Glenn Greenwald has good analysis of the fucking losers on the right and their false memes, i.e. Lies, HERE.
And I found the MO from one of his proir posts HERE.
Funny how he’s ragging on Smith on the last one….
heh, GO GLENN! GO BARACK! GO DEMs!
Smear the truth, deny the facts. The truth is the first casuality of the neo-conservative machine and yet the truth shall set you free:
From Howard Dean:
“McCain is now breaking the law by ignoring the campaign spending restrictions for the Republican primary that came when he asked for federal matching funds — funds he used as collateral on a loan that helped keep his campaign going.
But now that the lobbyist and special interest money has started pouring into his campaign, he’s trying to back out of the promise he made just a few months ago. They’re feeding so much cash into his bank account, this “reformer” wants nothing to do with federal campaign finance laws anymore.
That’s why today, we’re filing a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission demanding that John McCain be held to the campaign finance laws. Trying to back out shows a total lack of integrity and honesty — he made a deal with the American people to to abide by the law, and in return, he was guaranteed taxpayer money that he used to back a loan.”
Give ’em Hell Howard!
Mike Link wrote:
A Retraction?
Earlier today McCain said that to win the presidential race he must convince Americans that staying the course in the war is working. If he can’t do that, he said, “then I lose. I lose.”
And moments later…
“If I may, I’d like to retract ‘I’ll lose.'”
Straight-talk!
I call that the crooked talk trainwreck.
This is fabulous. The denials out of the Clinton camp sound similar to the denials out of the McCain camp.
On a conference call with reporters Monday, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson told reports that he had not seen the photo, that “I’m not aware that anyone in this campaign circulated it — I don’t imagine that you have any independent reporting to suggest that we did.”
Late Monday, the campaign sent out a memo in which Wolfson said he had not been aware of the release of the photo, and that it had not been sanctioned by the campaign — but added that “We have over 700 people on this campaign and I’m not in a position to know what each one of them may or may not have done.”