In this post ETF said Junior Johnson of NASCAR fame endorsed Obama. I can’t verify this. There are many blogs that are reporting it but not the Obama campaign or any mainstream press.
This is in GQ because the question is not how important this is or whether it is stupid but rather did it happen.
The Jackson Free Press has the story:
http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/index.php/site/comments/nascars_jimmy_johnson_endorses_obama/
No other papers yet though.
Thanks for your response but:
From your link:
Yet another article that points to a blog as source. This should be big news all over the South yet nothing but Blogs. Why?
Because it’s BS?
Real or not, something should show up in the news soon.
The never inaccurate Wikipedia now notes the endorsement:
Still nothing on regular news sites.
It links to a Blog.
Or the Campaign Website or Junior Johnson’s Website or Huffingtonpost or Talkingpoints or Politico…
Some of those blogs may not care or be aware of Johnson. It’s also possible they can’t confirm or deny what’s being reported. DailyKos does have it, but offers no new info.
You didn’t mention that C3 said he/she received the actual email, from Obama’s NC campaign. That’s more credible than the blog repostings.
All due respect to C3 I can’t exactly cite some dude on a message board who says he received the e-mail from the Obama campaign. Especially when there is nothing about the endorsement on the Obama Campaigns website.
This is getting baffling. The endorsement is all over the blogosphere but Chris Mathews Hardball was just on and didn’t mention it. CNN hasn’t mentioned it all day neither has MSNBC. No reputable source has mentioned it.
I want this to be true because I think it could help Obama in some of the battleground states, but I want to be able to point skeptics (heh) to a source they can’t just blow off.
What’s your desire for a cite have to do with it? You asked if Johnson endorsed Obama, and the email from Obama’s people in NC is the most credible piece of evidence either way.
I said that many news outlets may be trying to confirm this, and if so, that could be why they have not said anything. It may also be that he’s just not on their radar screen. The longer this goes on, the less credible the endorsement seems. I went to Junior Johnson’s Web site and called the number listed under “Junior Johnson Brand Products,” but the guy who picked up the phone didn’t know anything about it. He said they were just a computer store, and they maintain the Web site, so he wasn’t in any position to confirm it.
does not compute.
I said the email is the most credible piece of information available but that it loses credibility the more time passes with no other confirmation. But that’s assuming anyone else is trying to check up on this; CNN et al may just not care (even ESPN and SI have nothing about this), and since Johnson isn’t a political figure and is not, as far as we know, doing any events, Obama’s pages may not have him for that reason.
For right now, we actually have two Dopers who say they have received the email. That’s the most firm thing we have to this point.
Of course, it’s trivially easy to put any return address you like on an e-mail. So just because the “From” line on the e-mail is the same as for all of the campaign’s actual mailings, doesn’t mean that it’s actually from them.
I called Obama’s people in NC, and they sent me a copy of the email themselves. I don’t know if that’ll persuade your dad or acquaintances, askeptic, but I’m satisfied Obama did get Johnson’s endorsement.
OK. That is good enough for me, but not for them. You can imagine I am sure, that they would be as skeptical of me saying some guy called the Obama campaign as I would if somebody said Bill Clinton endorsed McCain and I know this despite no media source just some guy I don’t know called the McCain campaign headquarters. I can’t understand why this is getting no play in the media. Maybe you should move this over to GD since it has been factually answered. Now the question is more along the lines of a debate as to why this does not seem to matter.
Google news is finally showing this story:
http://www.theyoungturks.com/story/2008/10/27/202647/33/Diary/Nascar-Icon-Junior-Johnson-Endorses-Obama
Apparently, “The Young Turks” is a show on Air America Radio.
The e-mail was just a comment posted by a blogger named sfinneganus he has no articles credited to him so he is just another blogger and he doesn’t provide a cite just the language of the e-mail in question.
Yeah, I just posted it as the first nonzero response from google news.
No, I understand. At the moment, that’s the best I can do. Keep an eye on it and some stories may emerge in time. It’s just not the biggest news out there today.
Since we were already discussing the relevance of this debate in GD I’d rather not move this thread. We can have the same conversation in the Forked thread.
Even I’ve heard of Junior Johnson, and I think NASCAR is the anti-christ.
(… although I have no idea what his wife’s and children’s names are …)
So do I, but I’d never heard of him. I do think it’s possible that he’s below the radar screen for some news organizations at a busy time - and even in just the sports world, you’ve got the NFL and the World Series happening, and the NBA tipping off tomorrow.