This is what we're going to be up against

Those of us who are political bloggers sometimes live in a kind of alternate universe where people eat, sleep, live and breathe politics and current events. Politics pervades everything. If we talk about baseball, it's in the context of why Congress is wasting its time with Roger Clemens while George W. Bush gets a free pass. If we exchange recipes, it's in the context of how we can eat "greener." If we talk about Lost, it ends up as a discussion about government conspiracies.

This is one reason why it's good to have friends who don't really care about politics, or who basically ignore it. These friends are our barometer to the "real world" outside the confines of this peculiar little politics-obsessed community in which we spend most of our time.

I have a friend in her early 60's. She's a kind, motherly soul, who sees herself as a patriotic American. She thinks the flag is important, and has a "Support Our Troops" ribbon magnet on her car, but she hates the war in Iraq. She doesn't vote Republican, but isn't a staunch Democrat either. She's an "I vote for the person, not the party" kind of gal, and as a result lets her gut determine her vote. I don't send her political polemics, but when she asks my opinion, I give it to her. We get our hair done together, and every six weeks or so, we do the middle-aged-ladies-at-the hairdresser thing, where I sit with dye on my head and she argues with the guy who does our hair to not cut it too short. Then we go out to lunch.

I see this friend as a barometer for the kind of "swing voters" that get so much attention from both sides of the political spectrum.

Actual conversation from yesterday:

Friend: So what on earth are we going to do about this election?

Me: How do you mean?

Friend: Well, now that Edwards has bowed out, who the heck do we vote for?

Me: Well, I have to tell you, I'm going with Obama.

Friend: Really? (lowers voice) But....do you think he has enough of a commitment to our country....?

Me (picking up jaw from the floor): What do you mean?

Friend: Well, he doesn't respect our flag....and....he want to that school where they train terrorists...and...he goes to that church that puts being black above being an American.....

Me (knowing full well where she's getting this stuff): Where are you hearing this?

Friend: Well, my friends send me these e-mails....

So it wasn't hard to do the math. There are kazillions of these e-mails around. I don't need to outline them in detail, but they are the usual litany of smears amounting to "Barack Obama is an Islamist terrorist mole trying to take over our government."

I went home, and in the space of about a half-hour did some research and sent her the following in response:

Regarding Obama and the flag pin, here's something from the corporate media that repeats exactly what he said. You have to admit, he's right. The Republicans DO use the flag as a weapon.

Media Matters (a good site to watch) weighs in on the talking points your online friends have been listening to:

...and points out how Sean Hannity doesn't wear one either:

...and this blog from the NY Times shows most of the other candidates, including John McCain, don't wear one either.


Had enough?

On to the "salute the flag" controversy...

I assume that the photo here was sent to you.

Did you know that you do NOT have to put your hand over your heart when the national anthem is played? The Code for the National Anthem of the United States says:

"On all occasions, in singing the National Anthem, the audience will stand facing the flag, or the leader in an attitude of respectful attention. Outdoors, the men will remove hats."

Do your friends like those shrieking versions of the National Anthem played by American Idol pop divas before baseball games? Those are a lot more of a violation of the flag code than Barack Obama standing respectfully. The code also says:

"It is inappropriate to make or use sophisticated "concert" versions of the National Anthem."

That should take care of that one.

How about the madrassa issue?

Here you go, courtesy of CNN:

Allegations that Sen. Barack Obama was educated in a radical Muslim school known as a "madrassa" are not accurate, according to CNN reporting.
Insight Magazine, which is owned by the same company as The Washington Times, reported on its Web site last week that associates of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, had unearthed information the Illinois Democrat and likely presidential candidate attended a Muslim religious school known for teaching the most fundamentalist form of Islam.

Obama lived in Indonesia as a child, from 1967 to 1971, with his mother and stepfather and has acknowledged attending a Muslim school, but an aide said it was not a madrassa.

Insight attributed the information in its article to an unnamed source, who said it was discovered by "researchers connected to Senator Clinton." A spokesman for Clinton, who is also weighing a White House bid, denied that the campaign was the source of the Obama claim.

He called the story "an obvious right-wing hit job."

Insight stood by its story in a response posted on its Web site Monday afternoon.

[snip]

But reporting by CNN in Jakarta, Indonesia and Washington, D.C., shows the allegations that Obama attended a madrassa to be false. CNN dispatched Senior International Correspondent John Vause to Jakarta to investigate.

He visited the Basuki school, which Obama attended from 1969 to 1971.

"This is a public school. We don't focus on religion," Hardi Priyono, deputy headmaster of the Basuki school, told Vause. "In our daily lives, we try to respect religion, but we don't give preferential treatment."

Vause reported he saw boys and girls dressed in neat school uniforms playing outside the school, while teachers were dressed in Western-style clothes.

"I came here to Barack Obama's elementary school in Jakarta looking for what some are calling an Islamic madrassa ... like the ones that teach hate and violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Vause said on the "Situation Room" Monday. "I've been to those madrassas in Pakistan ... this school is nothing like that."

Vause also interviewed one of Obama's Basuki classmates, Bandug Winadijanto, who claims that not a lot has changed at the school since the two men were pupils. Insight reported that Obama's political opponents believed the school promoted Wahhabism, a fundamentalist form of Islam, "and are seeking to prove it."

"It's not (an) Islamic school. It's general," Winadijanto said. "There is a lot of Christians, Buddhists, also Confucian. ... So that's a mixed school."

The Obama aide described Fox News' broadcasting of the Insight story "appallingly irresponsible."

Fox News executive Bill Shine told CNN "Reliable Sources" anchor Howard Kurtz that some of the network's hosts were simply expressing their opinions and repeatedly cited Insight as the source of the allegations.

That last paragraph is important, because it's a window into how these wingnut memes get into the general consciousness. Thanks to Fox News, "fair and balanced" means that when you have two sides to a story, and one is factual and the other is completely and demonstrably utter horsepuckey, they both have to be given equal credibility as two sides to the story. Sort of like the evolution/creationism battle. A lie repeated often enough becomes conventional wisdom and eventually truth.

It was Joseph Goebbels who said “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

And that's where these wingnuts get their inspiration from -- Adolf Hitler's propaganda minister.

Now for the issue of Obama's church:

I'll bet this e-mail at Snopes.com is the one you got from your friend. Am I right?

If you're interested in another perspective on any of these issues, please tell me what you're hearing and I'll look it up for you. Don't forward me this stuff, because it makes me nuts. But if there's a specific issue that you want a perspective on, let me know. It may very well be that people are uncomfortable with Obama's international heritage and history, but after eight years of George W. Bush, don't you think that having someone who HAS not only visited but lived in other countries and seen other cultures might be an ASSET in trying to undo the damage this president has done?

This is one person who heard some things that bothered her and thought to ask someone she knows for another perspective. These are the exact kinds of smears to which Barack Obama is going to be subject if he's the Democratic nominee. And just as was done with the Swift Boat Liars, they will be repeated endlessly, until they gain critical mass.

It didn't take me much time to debunk the crap that's circulating to my friend. But how about all the people who get this stuff and DON'T seek out another perspective? I would hope that the Obama campaign isn't so blinded by Obama's message of "reaching out" that it isn't prepared to fight back.