Saturday, April 30, 2011

Drudge Leads the Afterbirthers - Romney Leads the Lynch Mob

According to TPMDC, the Drudge Report spent a lot of time Friday pimping for a strange "study" of the newly released "long-form" birth certificate for Barack Obama:

In a predictable turn, conspiracy theorists are now rallying behind a bogus claim that President Obama's long form birth certificate is a Photoshopped forgery -- with a huge helping hand from one of conservative media's biggest names.

The fringe theory's rapid spread within hours of the certificate's release presents almost a perfect example of one of the White House's justifications for taking on the birther issue -- namely, that thanks to the internet, conspiracy theories can migrate quickly from the fringe and into the mainstream if left unchecked.

In this case, it took only hours. The forgery claim appeared to have first started as an offbeat blog post from an Atlanta-based art director at an ad firm, Bryan Michael Nixon, less than two hours after Obama's statement. By the end of the day it had become a headline on Drudge Report, one of the single most trafficked news sites on the internet. The debunked forgery revelation drew thousands of comments on messageboards, migrated to birther and truther conspiracy guru Alex Jones' site, while a video explanation was viewed over 160,000 times on YouTube.

Here's the Youtube:



Here's another Youtube, this one of Mitch Romney wanting to "hang the misery index around Obama's neck"

I'm no great fan of Obama, but this stuff - pandering to the white racists who can't accept Obama as American, or to references to hanging a black man, are intentional, and designed to subliminally create dread of Obama.

4 comments:

Matthew said...

Isn't an equally, if not more, likely read on "hanging the misery index around Obama's neck" that it is a reference to, say, the New Testament "hanging a millstone around his neck" (for causing others to stumble)?

That was what first popped into -my- head, but then I don't go around with a presumption that every criticism of the President (however illegitimate or legitimate) is by default racist.

I find overuse of the "if you don't like Obama it's because you're racist" meme to be less than useful to constructive, adult, policy discussions.

Anonymous said...

I might agree with you had Romney not said it twice, and then said, "not literally." He knew exactly what he was saying, and it is not because he respects the President or his race. The GOP is heading for a huge fall...Snyder has just tried to privatize food stamps, and effort that has failed miserably in two other states. So poor seniors won't have health care OR food. Poor kids will just starve, and since there will be no public schools remaining, will hang out on street corners begging. Gee, it's 1800 all over again.

Anonymous said...

Aw, what do you know? Matthew @3:06 finds the topic of racism to be unproductive and immature. He tries to whitewash the Romney lynching reference by making it a "Christian" allusion. Matthew, by any chance, are you a white Christian guy? Yeah, I thought so.

Philip Munger said...

Romney's a Christian?