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Wednesday, August 20, 2008 12:00 AM

Debunking anti-Obama e-mails

Error-filled chain e-mails designed to scare voters away from Barack Obama are circulating widely on the Internet. Salon deconstructs a pair, one smearing the candidate, the other his wife.

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  • Wednesday, August 20, 2008 06:09 AM

    Unfortunately, I think these emails are effective.

    Some here have said that only people already stupid and racist will believe these emails anyway. I disagree. I have in my family a good number of reasonably intelligent, or at least not stupid, people who don't follow the news very carefully. Because they haven't been to a college with a black studies or a sociology major, they have no context in which to understand why Michelle Obama would have written a thesis about black-white relationships. It therefore seems plausible to them that she's got serious race loyalty issues.

    Similarly, where I live there are virtually no visible Muslims. Lots of Mennonites, Amish, and the like, but no Muslims. The only Muslim they've seen on TV more than once or twice is Bin Laden. So the Muslims = terrorists falsehood is an easy sell for them.

    The relatives of whom I speak are people who want, and try, to be good and fair people. And they usually are. It is their ignorance of certain matters--not racism--has made them prone to believe these emails. And often they do. That's why these emails are so @#$%! frustrating for me.

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