Pirate's Cove

And it’s all because you stupid, mean, uncivil (and probably raaaaacist) American civilians have access to the Internet (can we blame Al Gore?): A new era of accusation and innuendo

President Barack Obama’s appearance Wednesday in the White House briefing room to present a documented rebuttal of suspicions that he was not really born on U.S. soil was more than just a surprise. It was a decisive new turn in the centuries-long American history of political accusation and innuendo.

By directly and coolly engaging a debate with his most fevered critics, Obama offered the most unmistakable validation ever to the idea that we are living in an era of public life with no referee—and no common understandings between fair and unfair, between relevant and trivial, or even between facts and fantasy. (snip)

It’s hard to imagine Bill Clinton coming out to the White House briefing room to present evidence showing why people who thought he helped plot the murder of aide Vincent Foster—never mind official rulings of suicide—were wrong. George W. Bush, likewise, was never tempted to take to the Rose Garden to deny allegations from voices on the liberal fringe who believed that he knew about the pending September 11, 2001 attacks ahead of time and chose to let them happen.

Obama did something like the equivalent of this, by releasing complete documentation from his Hawaii birth and then making a sober West Wing appearance to explain himself.

I do believe that there is a slight difference between conspiracy theories about Clinton/Bush and a freaking birth certificate, a document could have provided when Team Hillary started the rumor. There is a huge difference between the conspiracies, and there was no reason to address the Foster or 9/11 idiocy.

He did so, senior Obama advisers say, because of the radical reordering of the political-media universe over the past 15 years or so. The decline of traditional media and the rise of viral emails and partisan Web and cable TV platforms has meant the near-collapse of common facts, believed across the political spectrum.

If you read on and on and on, we learn that only the traditional media, newspapers and the Big Three network news outlets, can be those fair and impartial….I’ll wait till you are done laughing and clean the drink off of your computer, tablet, or smartphone screen……in providing the real and truthful news. You know, like the Dan Rather/cBS story about Bush’s military service.

“We’re dealing with a lot of the same things Clinton and frankly Bush dealt with but we’re dealing with them at 1000 times the speed and with fewer referees,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “That is the downside of the disaggregation of the media. If you don’t want to believe what someone is telling you, you can go somewhere else. If you believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that the president is not American you can go somewhere to find somebody to validate that fact.”

Really? More than Bush? 9/11 Truth. Iraq was over oil, and he planned to attack Iraq even before 9/11. The liberal internment camps. Bush made up all the evidence for Iraq (though he was supposedly very stupid). He had a neurological disorder. The 2004/2006/2008 elections would be suspended. He left Blacks to die in New Orleans on purpose. He was drinking again. They go on and on and on.

When my side of the political aisle accuses Obama of willful murder of his own citizens, then he might be in the same ballpark as Bush. And where was the media in debunking most of the Bush conspiracy theories? Mostly absent, other than mentioning them.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.