Word: rumores
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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That night, in a conference call, Obama told his top aides it was time for a more aggressive solution to the rumors that have been popping up on the Internet about him and his family for months. And so the Obama campaign has built what might best be described as a Web-based rumor clearinghouse, located at fightthesmears.com, in which it hopes all the shady stories about Obama's faith, his family and his rumored connections with controversial figures...
...more than a year, Obama relied on conventional means to confront the blogosphere's superheated rumor mill - to little effect. The "fact-check" feature on his website, for instance, only seemed to spawn more, and wilder, rumors. A mention there of Obama's birth certificate spurred National Review Online to demand that he produce it to dispel groundless reports that Obama was actually born in Kenya and therefore would be constitutionally ineligible to be President; that his middle name is not Hussein but Muhammad; and that his mother actually named him Barry. That National Review article in turn became fodder...
...According to campaign officials, what finally launched Obama into a full rumor counteroffensive was a story that apparently first made a big splash on the Internet in late May in a post by pro-Hillary Clinton blogger Larry Johnson. Quoting "someone in touch with a senior Republican," Johnson claimed that there was a video of Michelle Obama "blasting 'whitey' during a rant at Jeremiah Wright's church." (Later versions of the rumor had Michelle's "rant" happening at a Rainbow/PUSH Coalition conference.) No such videotape has surfaced...
When the Obama campaign got wind of the rumor in April, Michelle's close friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett asked Michelle if there could be anything to it; the candidate's wife dismissed it out of hand. But by mid-May, it was picking up steam on the Internet, and Michelle's advisers decided it was time to have a serious talk with her about it. On a campaign swing through Oregon, Michelle's chief of staff Melissa Winter grilled her on the particulars of the various versions. Had she ever spoken at Trinity Church? Could she ever recall having...
Obama's new rumor shredder makes it easy to find both the "lies" and the "facts" behind the "mystery tape rumor." Secondary pages note that "even some conservatives don't buy it" and list two well-read conservative bloggers who have debunked the tape tale. And in what is likely to be the most read part of the new site, the campaign cites the probable sources of the stories in a section called "Who's behind the lies?" As the Obama sleuths explain it, the "Michelle Obama Mystery Tape Rumor" appears to be a work of fiction lifted "almost word...