One thing to keep a lookout for when watching the emerging wingnut-slime-machine assault on Barack Obama is efforts to build a superstructure of lies on top of a foundation of a few inconsequential facts.
This sort of stuff has the potential to be effective, because once people accept the germ of truth within the assault, they're at risk of believing the grotesque falsehoods that sprouted from it. The wingers are very good at doing this, as we've seen again and again.
Here, for instance, is a "report" on Fox News, by radio host John Batchelor, on Obama's alleged ties to Bill Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground who has been unrepentant about the bombs set by the group. The germ of the story -- that Obama has some sort of relationship with him -- is true. But look at how creatively Batchelor embellishes the whole tale...
You see, in Fox's telling, now Ayers is Obama's "mentor" and he and fellow Weather Underground member Bernadine Dohrn were "principals" on his first campaign for state senate. Also note how Batchelor slyly slips in the reference to September 11th, an obvious effort to connect the bombing by Obama's "mentor" to the terrorism that brought down the towers.
Now, far be it from me to question Batchelor's reporting abilities. But none of this additional info is sourced in any way. And it hasn't been reported anywhere, either. This has been looked into pretty exhaustively, and what's been reported thus far is that Obama met with Ayers and Dohrn in 1995; Obama served with Ayers on the board of an anti-poverty group; Ayers donated $200 to Obama's 2001 state senate campaign; and the two men are " friendly."
If Ayers were really Obama's "mentor" someone would have attested to this by now. And if Ayers and Dohrn had been "principals" on his campaign you'd think there would be a record of it somewhere. This is fiction, pure and simple. But it's the kind of fiction that has the potential to get folks saying, hey, didja hear Obama's tight with some America-hating dude who blew up a bunch of stuff? The guy was Obama's mentor, or something...
At any rate, get ready for eight months of this sort of garbage. It's going to get a lot uglier than this.
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