You're right, it's very important that we fight to stop irrational conspiracy theories. I salute you.

Fight the smears that are untrue.

Ignore the smears that are true.

THANKS!

That makes it easy now.

What they do not address, is true.

How do you tell when a politician is lying?

I don't believe he's a Muslim. But what is strange is the fact that he denies it as if it's TB! "What?? Me, a Muslim?? No way!!" That's how it comes across. So, why haven't Muslim groups come out and say something like "So what if he's a Muslim?" What I do believe, though, is that he belonged to a radical Black church headed by a crazy preacher whom Obama knew very well for twenty years.

...in the strictest sense of the word.

His father was a Muslim, therefore, according to Muslim tradition, he is a Muslim.

In fact, he's a Muslim who converted to Christianity, possibly the worse thing you can be in a Muslim country.

I'm just interested. Do you think the problem with the site is the way it is designed and the way users are supposed to interact with it?

Or is it the whole concept which is flawed?

Do you have a better idea how he should combat all of the misinformation out there?

You know, maybe that's the question we should all be asking.

Frankly,

What's Wrong with Salon.com?

should be the headline story over at Huffington Post, or Daily Kos -- you know, online magazine and blog sites that ACTUALLY WANT TO ELECT THE DEMOCRAT THIS YEAR????

Clearly, you've gotten the anti-Obama memo from Joan, Farhood.

So, Salon...Can Obama or his campaign EVER do a single, bloody thing right? EVER?

Will he EVER measure up?

Or will you all continue to inflict the death of a thousand cuts on him, thereby doing your very best to ensure that the country elects McCain.

Do you really sit around at your editorial meetings figuring out teeny tiny arcane things to research, things that will allow you to smack down Obama yet again?

PATHETIC.

Salon is just PATHETIC.

Or is there?

Isn't it disturbing that being called Muslim is a "smear"? It's sickening to see a legitimate faith--whether you believe in it or not--being huddled in with "racist" and "unpatriotic".

I am an Obama supporter, and I was a little offended at his adamant protest about being called a Muslim. It would have been nice to see his camp treat the misrepresentation of his faith as a misunderstanding to be cleared up rather than a malicious lie or attack on his character. There is nothing inherently wrong with being of Muslim faith, and "Muslim" does not equate to "terrorist" (any more than "Christian" should equate to "crusader").

You'd think Christians would be dancing in the streets about Obama's conversion. It shows that that the heathen dark-skinned horde can still be redeemed by washing his sins away with the blood of our savior, Jesus Christ. And those heathens who don't should be killed because they are intransigent sinners; they have been exposed to the truth but refuse to realize that they worship a false God and a false Prophet. But Obama (probably because of his white blood) threw off the chains of Muslim devil worshippers; Christ won! Whoo Hoo!

And Kufir, why would a Christian like you care about the traditions of these heathens, anyway? They are wrong and possibly evil to boot. A Christian is any person who accepts Jesus Christ into his heart; in the one true religion it doesn't matter who your father was.

The fightthesmears.com site made me scratch my head a little, you hit the nail on the head of what bothers me about it.

It should be more like snopes.com and less like.. political counter-spin. The brevity seems to be a nod to the adage "if you are explaining, you're loosing."

I've never much cared for that particular idea, and I'd like to see the Obama campaign turn that bit of conventional wisdom on its head.

The reason we have so many low-information voters is because politicians are afraid to get detailed. It is my hope that Obama doesn't fall prey to the trap of over-generalizing and pleasing no one rather than specifically addressing an issue point-by-point and putting off a few people with ADHD.

Obama has, I think, done a much better job in aggressively pushing back against rumors and innuendo than many in his position. Ask yourself this: where would we be today if Sen. Kerry had maintained a web site that pushed information out combatting the Swift Boat lies?

Farhad is correct that there is plenty of information out there debunking myths and inaccuracies about Sen Obama. As I often say to clients and colleagues, though, possessing good on-line information is like having a really great piece of marketing collateral in your desk drawer. Its utterly worthless if you arent pushing it to your target audience. Obama and his campaign must push accurate information beyond his supporters, not wait for it to disseminate on its own.

I agree with Farhad's assertion that sites like Snopes and Factcheck.org would be preferable vehicles for debunking myths because of their neutrality. Unfortunately, these sites are the classic 'brochure in the drawer'. People who are propagating falsehoods-- frankly, even people RECEIVING the false info-- are not nearly as likely to do any due diligence as one might expect. A shockingly high percentage of people think that anything on the 'net simply MUST be true. Countless times I have recieved the viral email rumor of the moment from an otherwise intelligent colleague who, after I or someone else sends them a link to Snopes.com debunking their info, retracts it later. Sadly, the percentage of people doing this fact-checking is tiny.

It is clear that Obama is not a Muslim. But his website's fact check section says that "Obama never prayed in a mosque" as well. That's either a lie or disingenuous. According to family members and schoolmates, he certainly attended mosque services infrequently with his stepfather and family while in Indonesia. I don't know whether he actually "prayed" or just went through the motions. It depends on what your definition of the word "is" is, I guess.

He also had classes on Muslim prayer in his non-radical but Muslim-themed primary school.

So the outright denial about things which really have nothing to do with the Christian adult that he is only feed the rumor mills. Justifiably so. Obama should state that he prayed in a mosque, that he studied Muslim prayers, but he was basically atheist like his parents until he was born again in Chicago as a committed Christian (even though his primary reason for joining the Church was to influence the outcome of his community organization and political activities).

Nothing wrong with that. But the small lies . . . why bother with those?