Fight the Obama smears
The Obama campaign has launched a new website called Fight The Smears, where supporters can research and distribute responses or alert the campaign to lies and distortions spread by right wing blogs, viral emails and the media.
An item on the page today clarifies snippets from his books. One such snippet that's made for inflammatory rumors, refers to Obama's 1985 job interview with Jerry Kellman, who was looking to hire a black community organizer for the Developing Communities Project, founded the year before by the Catholic Church in Chicago. It was felt the DCP's then white management wasn't as effective as it could be in reaching the black and Latino communities and working with churches on Chicago's South Side. Kellman wanted Obama to work with him for a while and then take over his job as project director.
In "Dreams From My Father," Obama writes that his only goal was "organizing black folks at the grass roots for change" when he took the $1,000-a-month job at the DCP. He was 23 and the only paid staffer."He was very idealistic - so idealistic that it was a problem initially," recalled Kellman, who hired Obama during their first in-person interview, at a Lexington Avenue diner in Manhattan. For example, Obama was often surprised that local politicians or pastors would come after him if his ideas threatened their vested interests, Kellman said.
Among other insults, detractors branded Obama as "an Ivy League elitist" and "a pawn of the Jews and Catholics," Kellman said. Many early DCP supervisors were Jewish or Catholic but the group soon drew black, evangelical pastors as well.
In Obama's book, he is walking home from meeting with Kellman and thinking over the job possibility.
A smear email presents the text:
SMEAR EMAIL'There was something about him that made me wary, a little too sure of himself, maybe. And white.'
The Fight the Smears website answers word for word with context:
FACTFULL QUOTE From Dreams From My Father:
"He offered to start me off at ten thousand dollars the first year, with a two-thousand-dollar travel allowance to buy a car; the salary would go up if things worked out. After he was gone, I took the long way home, along the East River promenade, and tried to figure out what to make of the man. He was smart, I decided. He seemed committed to his work. Still, there was something about him that made me wary. A little too sure of himself, maybe. And white--he'd said himself that that was a problem." [Page 142]
Yes, Kellman was having a problem with the job, because he was white, and Kellman wanted to bring in a black replacement for himself. And Kellman did. That was about it. As we know, Obama also had problems at first, which he overcame with the help of the older women of the community he worked with on DCP and gained gradual acceptance by community and church leaders.
As peculiar as it may seem to have to defend himself in such an innocuous situation, it's what has to be done, apparently.
And then there are outright lies.
Exclusive: Obama's Anti-Rumor PlanAs 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 Internet about his wife Michelle. Obama lost his cool. "We have seen this before. There is dirt and lies that are circulated in e-mails, and they pump them out long enough until finally you, a mainstream reporter, asks me about it," Obama said, bristling. "That gives legs to the story. If somebody has evidence that myself or Michelle or anybody has said something inappropriate, let them do it."
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 can go to die.
Obama is enlisting his millions of supporters to help him hunt down and quash these stories, just as those supporters helped him turn his insurgent campaign into a history-making juggernaut. Says Obama adviser Anita Dunn: "We will not allow Michelle — or, for that matter, Barack—to be defined by rumors."
-snip
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 uttering that racial epithet? No, no, Michelle answered again and again. Additionally, she said, "whitey" is simply not a word that African Americans of her generation tend to use — or that she herself would ever say. Michelle was shocked and frustrated when her aides approached her the second time about the alleged incident.
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 for word from a novel published in 2006."
The rest of fightthesmears.com is designed to be a guided tour of other sensational rumors circulating on the Web about Obama and his family. Click on the claim that Obama attended a "radical madrasah," for instance, and it takes you to a CNN feature on the very ordinary-looking elementary school he actually went to as a child in Indonesia. The rumor that Obama was sworn in to the U.S. Senate with the Koran yields a photo of him with his hand on a family Bible. Also featured are videos of Obama saying the Pledge of Allegiance, to combat claims that he refuses to. And, yes, the campaign plans to post a .pdf of Obama's birth certificate. Near each rumor will be a fight-back button, offering suggestions as to where and how Obama supporters can call or e-mail to counter the rumors. The site will also have a spot where Obama supporters can alert the campaign to any new rumors they may be seeing on the Web or in their mailboxes or hearing on the telephone.
Source: Time Magazine
Clarkies know all about this sort of thing: Rapid Response. We've spent years defending the General from political smear jobs. The Republicans are going to keep coming at Obama; this we know.
If you can help, please do. Visit the site often as new material is added. Forward it to your friends. Base letters to the editor and responses during web discussion on the truth.
