The only McCain smears I’ve seen have come from the right (there was some pretty vicious stuff out there during the early days of the primaries). If anything has come from the left, I haven’t seen it.
Bush’s weakness is not really that he’s stupider than average, I don’t think, rather that he is pathologically incurious. That said, there’s some evidence that his intellect has dulled significantly over time.
“That was no lady, that was my babymama.”
No, it really isn’t. The kind of viral emails and invented stories we’re talking about only seem to come from the right. If it happens on the left, I haven’t seen it.
That’s not a smear, it’s an observation.
The tactic of making up stories out of whole cloth and speraeding them around the internet is (as near as I can tell) almost entirely a right wing practice. Even when it was done to McCain, it was done from his right.
Perceptions of candidates as “dumb,” or “elitist,” or whatever are not the kind of thing we’re tlking about. We’re talking about the absolute fictions. Bush really did go AWOL, that’s not a fiction. Accusations that Barack Obama is a Muslim or that John McCain fathered a black baby are pure fictions and smears.
This is simply not true. I even gave you a second example in my earlier post - the smears about Bush’s National Guard service, culminating in the memo that got Dan Rather in such trouble?
And the Bush / stupid meme was and remains most definitely a smear, and you are being disingenuous if you paint it any other way.
That wasn’t a smear, it was true. The content of the story was all true (and well known even before that story). The veracuty of one document was called into question, but it was never actually proven to be a forgery and the secretary involved said it was an accurate facsimile. Every factual claim about Bush deserting his Guard service was true.
That’s not a smear, it’s a perception based on observation. Maybe you look at Bush and see a razor sharp mind, but most people see a dolt. People think Bush is stupid because of how he speaks and acts, not because of any email campaigns.
How about the links I posted?
Some of them were pro-Bush glurge, one of them was Bush Sr. A couple of them were genuine examples of false “Bush is stupid” stories, a couple were clarifications of perceived stupidity (like the waving at Stevie Wonder), but nothing you linked to approaches the kind of aggressively vicious slime engaged in routinely by the right. I bet the ratio of viral emails is tilted at least 4-1 to the right.
I think it is a good idea as long as it doesn’t try to react to every little thing that gets said. Certain mem es persist throughout and need to be dealt with appropriately, but one doesn’t wnat to seem to knee-jerkish either.
I seriously doubt any of those smears were of the same league, or as well organized or reported, as any of the current crop of Obama smears.
Which one was pro-Bush? He is acting like an idiot in most of them by misspeaking or doing some dumb ass prayer thing.
He is a conservative.
Can you provide a cite for that.
Clearly you’re not an Evangelical Christian, who might well see it as their duty to ‘witness’ for nearly anyone who asks. That sort of story is propping up Bush Light as the go-to guy for Evangelicals and casts him in a very positive ‘man of the people’ ‘good Christian who knows where his bread is buttered’ sort of way.
Yes, thanks. And? Still not all that many Liberal smears of Conservatives floating about. A lot of Conservative smearing Conservative, and a metric shit-load of Conservatives smearing Liberals.
I’ll leave this to DTC; I’m sure not a whole lot of googling will get us there in very short time.
I like to think I am not retarded, but one never knows.
The stopping to witness to a kid story is pro-Bush glurge, for sure, The prayer clb thing struck me that way to.
That story wasn’t even really a smear. It was about a public perception based on a genuine image (Poppy looking befuddled at a supermarket scanner). None of these examples have the quality of the “Obama is a Muslim” emails or the accusations of serial murder against the Clintons. These are are not in the same league.
I didn’t say “I know,” I said “I bet.”
It is a smear. It says look how out of touch and stupid this guy is.
It says that people looked at a piece of authentic video and thought that. The video was not faked, though.
So all bullshit commentary on this photo:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/images/2008/02/25/obama_kenya.jpg
was not a smear because the real photo is real and they were just interpreting it?
No, one doesn’t.
It’s an opinion; if repeated widely as fact could be perhaps seen as a smear. But it’s not an outright factual lie, as all of the actual smears mentioned above are. Big difference.