Obama Fights Smears Via Web 2.0 Approach

Posted by K.C. Jones on June 13, 2008 02:08 PM

Blogs, e-mail, and Web sites have reached a milestone of sorts in campaign politics. If Sen. Barack Obama's campaign is any indication, they have taken on a new level of significance. Obama's team created a Web site just to deal with rumors generated online. Interestingly, the site tackles the problem in a decidedly Web 2.0 way.

Fightthesmears.com asks Obama's supporters to report rumors, suggest ways to dispel them, and reply to e-mail and other sources of the rumors.

Although rumors have circulated about Obama for months, one of the latest -- that his wife stood at the bully pulpit of the now-infamous Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church and blasted "whitey" -- seemed to tip the scales and prompt the Obama campaign to respond.

Until this week, the campaign largely ignored remarks that seemed to come from the ground up and circulate online. When mainstream media asked about them, campaign staff dismissed the questions.

Now, those questions and others can be viewed on a "watchdog" Web site devoted entirely to refuting rumors and unflattering statements.

Supporters can sign up for an "Action Wire" and e-mail the campaign's lists of lies and truths to their friends and acquaintances.

The site offers responses through a variety of technologies, text, including video of Obama saying the pledge and footage of him attending a regular school (not a radical Muslim school, or madrassa, as some have maintained). It also offers a PDF file showing the presidential candidate's birth certificate to counter those who have said Obama was born in Kenya, changed his name from Barry, and was born with the middle name of Islam's prophet.

It states that Michelle Obama never stood at the bully pulpit at the Trinity United Church of Christ and has not used the word "whitey." It also states that she never spoke as part of a panel at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Conference in 2004, when some bloggers have claimed she unleashed a tirade against white people. Though critics have suggested there's videotaped evidence, none has surfaced and the Obama campaign insists that no such tape exists.