Who's Hit-Job?

Late last week, insightmag.com published a story that alleged that Barack Obama had been less that completely forthright regarding his educational experience as a prepubescent youth in Indonesia. In fact, a young Obama, the piece discloses, spent two years being educated at a Madrassa, an Islamic seminary.

“The sources said the background check concerned Mr. Obama's years in Jakarta. In Indonesia, the young Obama was enrolled in a Madrassa and was raised and educated as a Muslim. Although Indonesia is regarded as a moderate Muslim state, the U.S. intelligence community has determined that today most of these schools are financed by the Saudi Arabian government and they teach a Wahhabi doctrine that denies the rights of non-Muslims.”

What then? What are they implying by that? That he was indoctrinated by radical Islamists that want to destroy us? How could that be because I’ve heard him talk, he’s Christian, he’s smart, a radical Islamist wouldn’t get elected to the Senate. He must be covert al-Qaeda!

Not only is it absolutely ridiculous to allege that he went to a Madrassa when it is completely not true, but it is even more malicious for the story to insinuate that Senator Obama is a treasonous foreign puppet.

And on another level, the implication of Hillary Clinton’s team as the source of the lie awards another early opportunity to show of Hillary’s lust for power and her cold, calculating methodology.

A Soap Opera for sure

No wonder cable news jumped all over it. It is not a surprise that Glen Beck, Page Six, and Fox News Channel failed to wait for any kind of verification that the internet rumor that they had just broadcast contained any ounce of truth. It is however, where many people are getting their news. Just like when the internet was young, my teachers warned me about including information that I read there in my reports and papers because much of it can turn out to be substantively incorrect, one cannot trust the information coming from their television sets. My question here is, from where did the original lie on insightmag.com come? Whose operative planted that lie?

It is highly publicized stories like these that lead to the “facts” behind “truthiness”

These are the “facts” that lead to 45% of Americans believing in the existence of WMDs in Sadaam’s Iraq or that there were links between Sadaam and al-Qaeda.

These are the “facts” that neoconservatives have created and manipulated to operate in a consequence-free Washington D.C.