http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1813663,00.htmlThursday, Jun. 12, 2008
Exclusive: Obama's Anti-Rumor Plan
By Karen Tumulty/WASHINGTON
As 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)
My bolding, there's more of the article, excellent read in its entirety.
Democratic Underground is really, really good at debunking! Remember the "Obama flips a finger" brouhaha? Well, that was debunked right here on DU hours BEFORE it made it to the main stream media. I remember being furious that MSNBC did a piece on the stupid rumor WITHOUT the pics taken from a different angle that debunked the whole damn thing. If DU had had a way to get those debunking pics to the Obama campaign, they could have quashed that stupid rumor before it rose to MSM level.
And now we do -- great idea Obama campaign!
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