Looks like the blogs are going to be busy this cycle rebutting smears against our candidates. This latest is penned by Mike Allen.
Now, Obama's about to endure a going-over that would make a proctologist blush. Why has he sometimes said his first name is Arabic, and other times Swahili?
How suspicious! The answer, as both Brad Delong and The Poorman note, is that Swahili and Arabic are extremely similar languages because of millenia of trade between East Africa and the Middle East. Delong writes, ""Barack" is both a Swahili word meaning "blessed by God" and an Arabic word meaning "blessed.""
Whoever gave Allen the smear sought him out because they are building a political narrative around Obama divorced from important political issues. And Allen repeated the smear without checking because it seemed to fit into the story he wanted to tell. In this same article, Allen said that party strategists argued that Obama is vulnerable because of "his frank liberalism in a time when the party needs centrist voters." Where does this come from? According to recent polling data I dug up in one minute, Obama is stronger among independents relative to Clinton than he is among any other block of voters. Yet there Allen is, writing a conventional wisdom that 'party strategists' are telling him, even though it's patently false.
Just perusing Media Matters' archive of Mike Allen shows that his reporting is a trainwreck of dishonest hackery and conventional wisdom. Yesterday, Allen went on Fox News and reiterated Donohue's smear of Edwards without referencing any other context. He has called McCain 'honest' and 'authentic'. And this isn't the first time he's unfairly and dishonestly gone after Obama. Here he is on Glenn Beck:
Now, one of [Obama's] colleagues points out to me that none of these are likely to hurt him in a Democratic primary, but there's probably not many people who watched that clip of Senator Obama saying at the convention, "We worship an awesome God in the blue states, too," who know that Senator Obama had 100 percent from Planned Parenthood when he was in the state legislature.
According to Allen, being pro-choice means that you don't believe in God. There's something deeper here going on, and if you read between the lines, you can sense that Allen is a petty, selfish and entitled reporter who wants to cut Obama down to size. Just read this report of Obama at the DNC meeting, the entire subtext of which is that Mike Allen is not getting the access he wants.
Senator Clinton's opening slogan was, "Let the conversation begin." Senator Obama just wanted the conversation to end....But it turns out that Obama, riding an astonishing wave of glowing publicity for a candidate 21 months from an election, already has a bubble around him that is tighter than the one that surrounded Texas Gov. George W. Bush, who spent long hours of the fledgling days of his candidacy in bull sessions with reporters....
As Obama left the hotel reception, smiling and saying, "Thank you AGAIN," I introduced myself and said, "Good evening, Senator, may I walk with you?" He replied, "You can walk with me. That doesn't mean you can ask questions." I chuckled, thinking he was kidding. "But you can certainly walk with me," he added. The Senator then underscored, "I'm sorry. I'm not answering questions."
Allen's model for a candidate is George W. Bush in 2000, someone who patently ran on a false platform of openness and humility, and has then operated the most secretive and dishonest White House in history. In his campaign in 2000, Bush lied about the effect of tax cuts, he lied about not wanting to 'nation-build', and he lied about the size and intrusiveness of government, and he did so under the cover of a press that took frat-boy jokes as a favorable substitute for actually answering questions coherently and honestly.
That's the kind of campaign Allen wants to cover, and Obama's not giving it to him. So Allen's mad, and it shows.
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