Dirty Campaigning and the Fake Michelle Obama “Whitey” Problem
Dirty tricks are evidently not only for Republicans. A Pro-Clinton blogger is set this morning to use a piece of video and intentionally distort the contents of it in order to boost his candidate. He’s taking aim at Michelle Obama. He knows his interpretation of the video has been debunked, but he’s likely to do a “FauxNews” hit job anyway.
They’re talking about this on DKos, but the BooMan himself has the biggest scoop. Here at ASZ we normally do not wade into the candidate wars on the Democrat side of the aisle, but this is just stupid. Larry Johnson of No Quarter, a long-time Clinton supporter, has analyzed a tape that he claims whas Michelle Obama using the term “whitey” over and over in a speech about Bush policies. As BooMan suggests, Johnson is deliberately mis-analyzing it. She used the phrase “why’d he.” Yeah, you can see all of the speech on links from BooMan’s article.
So, Larry Johnson of No Quarter has promised he’s going to post more about this deliberate and propaganda by 9:00 am this morning. He’s on notice, since both DKos and BooMan have exposed this as fraudulent. I’m guessing the guy is going to backpedal on it. Larry Johnson is, after all, an intelligent man, I presume, at least one would infer that from what he posts about his bio:
From 1989 until October 1993, Larry Johnson served as a Deputy
Director in the U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism.
He managed crisis response operations for terrorist incidents
throughout the world and he helped organize and direct the US
Government’s debriefing of US citizens held in Kuwait and Iraq, which
provided vital intelligence on Iraqi operations following the 1990
invasion of Kuwait. Mr. Johnson also participated in the investigation
of the terrorist bombing of Pan Am 103. Under Mr. Johnson’s leadership
the U.S. airlines and pilots agreed to match the US Government’s two
million-dollar reward.From 1985 through September 1989 Mr. Johnson worked for the Central
Intelligence Agency. During his distinguished career, he received
training in paramilitary operations, worked in the Directorate of
Operations, served in the CIA’s Operation’s Center, and established
himself as a prolific analyst in the Directorate of Intelligence. In
his final year with the CIA he received two Exceptional Performance
Awards.Mr. Johnson is a member of the American Society for Industrial
Security. He taught at The American University’s School of
International Service (1979-1983) while working on a Ph.D. in
political science. He has a M.S. degree in Community Development from
the University of Missouri (1978), where he also received his B.S.
degree in Sociology, graduating Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1976.
Yeah, Larry Johnson likely knows better and as such he likely won’t follow through with this, as he knows now the supposedly offending video has been debunked. But maybe we need to send the guy an email and tell him that we don’t want this sort of ugly campaign trick associated with anyone in the Democratic Party, and certainly not in support of Hillary Clinton, who is a fine Senator and does not deserve to have this disgusting crap presented in her favor.
So please, send Larry Johnson an email and tell him what you think. Larry Johnson’s email address is lcjohnso@ix.netcom.com. Send him a little letter, will you?
The assertion that the basis for the video claim is audio of “why’d he” being misinterpreted as “whitey” is based upon speculation regarding a possible source of a “video”. Unfortunately, this speculation has been misinterpreted as actual fact, and this claim of fact has since been used to justify claims that the video is real, based upon the rationalization that the assertion of misinterpretation must be based upon a viewing of on actual video when in fact no evidence of such a video has been shown.
what dimensio said, i think. there’s been talk of this video for several weeks now. the fact is no one on the left has seen it, including larry johnson or booman, so i don’t really know where boo gets off reporting his unique knowledge of the “facts.”
yes i know johnson is a clinton partisan but frankly, if this video is for real, and the thugs are holding onto it as an october surprise, then the obama camp should be thanking him for alerting them to this threat. but as with the bushies, one of the obama people’s primary games is kill the messenger. again, this is not larry johnson’s dirty trick, but the thugs and if you actually read his reporting you will see this. i read his blog regularly, not just when kos or boo tells me to, and nowhere has he ever purported to have it or seen it, he’s just reporting some rumors of something that could be very damaging to obama. but like ostriches, no one wants to face that reality. maybe he shouldn’t have written about a rumor, but if it is true, and he knew and he didn’t say anything, who would get blamed for it? larry johnson.
got hope? i hope that the obama supporters return to reality once clinton is out of the picture. now that half the democratic base has been alienated, they are gonna need alot more than platitudes to win the election. clinton has already repeatedly urged her supporters to vote for obama in the general should she lose the nomination which is all but sure at this point. but it’s gonna be obama’s responsibility to make it happen.
and for the record, i think this post is too partisan for asz, but i’m not the owner of the blog so it’s not my call.
but it’s shoddy at best, steve. there are no links to the video, and booman took his big scoop from a kos commenter. seriously, this kind of circle jerking has no place here.
I guess my comment got epu’ed.
I was going to mention that my brother at Philly Bits deserves a bit of credit here too. I don’t know where Booman got his info, but Ray has been bopping Larry Johnson over the head for weeks now.
Yeah, right. Except Obama’s site inadvertently rolls on Michelle Obama and puts her at the “scene of the crime.” This site dug out all the relevant FACTS and put the pieces together:
http://www.nationaleconomist.com/2008/06/obama-site-adds-evidence-that-michelle.html