Categories
Election 2008 McCain Obama Politics

Obama and McCain: The Younger Years

If you're still thinking about voting for Obama...

Yet another classy Obama email going around.  The text:

If you’re still thinking about voting for Obama ; I have a question for you…Is your head up your ass?

Then at the bottom, the picture links to a ridiculous site that seems to be designed to turn people off from Obama with over-the-top praise.

Sample quotes from the site:

He may just be divine after all.

It is apparent and knowledgeable that a man of your caliber possess a certain divinity about himself. The evil Republican party is bent on crucifying you, politically speaking. If this comes to pass then you must relay on your faith and disciples to carry our message of hope and divinity to those who do not hear. You must allow the blind to see the light.

You are the MESSIAH!

The footer to the site mentions that every quote is made up but that it’s not supposed to be negative about anyone – it’s for “entertainment purposes only.”  Yet this made-up story about Nestor Todd is now associated with a smear email.  It’s all a bit odd.

If it weren’t for the strength of the Obama smear campaign already, I could easily see this as a harmless spoof.  The owners of obamacures.com (who wish to remain anonymous) might intend their email to be a spoof of the negative smears circulating about Obama – and their website to be a spoof of the over-the-top praise Obama has gotten – but the practical effect of this is to target those people who will miss the irony of the faux-smear email and whose stereotypes about Obama supporters will be reinforced if they take the extra time to check the website associated with the email.

This is of course a different tact than taken most of the previous email smears which seem to have been based on the premise that their target audience was lazy and gullible Americans.

Some of those previous smear emails are discussed here:

Categories
Election 2008 Obama Politics

Obama will stand with the Muslims

Of course, not all my conversations in immigrant communities follow this easy pattern. In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific reassurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.

From Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope on page 261.  An email is circulating which summarizes this as follows:

This guy wants to be our President and control our government…

From Audacity of Hope: “I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.”

A noble sentiment from Obama is turned into a fear-mongering distortion.  This election will be brutal.  But we can win it.  And we must.

Categories
Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons

And Obama wants to be President??????

[reddit-me]In the aftermath of Ms. Clinton’s “3 AM” ad, this photograph of Barack Obama began to circulate with this message:

When you are faking a pose for a camera photo opportunity, at least you can get the phone turned in the right direction! And Obama wants to be President??????

Hillary's Obama Lie

I got it in an email a few weeks ago, checked out Snopes and other places to see what the real deal was and found nothing.

Today, my dad emailed me with this reference to Snopes. As suspected the photo has been altered. The original:

The Truth: Obama and the Not Upside Down Phone

Snopes points to a very interesting difference between the photos. The altered photograph has the time on the clock changed to 3 AM.

So to be clear: a viral email conveying a very Clintonian message began to circulate in concert with Ms. Clinton’s ad campaign underlining the message of the campaign itself.

This email comes after a series of emails earlier this year and last year. At the time of the previous emails, I asked:

The real question this email should bring up is this: Who is making this stuff up, and who are they trying to fool?

The claims behind the email are demonstrably false, and have been widely reported as such. These smears have appeared in a number of emails, although they all follow the same story line. Someone is obviously deliberately perpetrating a falsehood – and the lies have come up during the Iowa caucuses, as well as from a campaign staff of one of Obama’s rivals.

Someone is betting on the laziness and gullibility of the American people. The question is: Who?

It’s still the question.