Web site fights anti-Obama rumors

WASHINGTON — Heard the one about how Sen. Barack Obama won't pledge allegiance to the flag? People now can watch him do it — on tape, with his hand over his heart.

What about the rumor that he took the Senate oath of office with his hand on the Quran? As of Thursday, it's easy to find a picture of him being sworn in with his family Bible.

That evidence, and more, appears on a new Web site set up by the Democratic presidential candidate as part of a new effort to fight damaging rumors.

Until now, Obama's strategy had been to ignore the rumors and hope most people would think they're false. But the Obama team now acknowledges that the old approach was doing nothing to stem the tide of questionable — and in several cases demonstrably incorrect — snippets about Obama's life.

"It's not enough to just know the truth," Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said. "We have to be proactive and fight back."

That's a far cry from past practice in politics.

On fightthesmears.com, Obama's aides wrote out and deconstructed five of the nastiest rumors, one by one. At the top, "Michelle Obama says 'whitey' on tape."

The rumor that she railed against "whitey" in a diatribe at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ has circulated on conservative Republican blogs for weeks and was repeated by radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh. The rumor included claims of a videotape of the speech that would be used to bring down Barack Obama's candidacy this fall.

"No such tape exists," the site said, after naming Limbaugh and others who have passed along the story, and also knocking down details of it. The site also offers people the chance to report rumors and to send information to their friends.

Michelle Obama has been the target of several conservative attacks. Many came from her comment that the Obama campaign has made her proud of her country "for the first time," a remark that inspired a Tennessee Republican Party Web video questioning her patriotism. Other insulting attacks, not limited to the Internet, have emerged.

Fox News Channel referred to her as "Obama's baby mama" in a graphic Wednesday, using the slang description of a woman who has a baby outside of a romantic relationship or marriage. Bill Shine, senior vice president of programming at Fox, said in a statement that a producer "exercised poor judgment." The producer was not fired, and no disciplinary action was announced.

Fox News anchor E.D. Hill earlier referred to a "terrorist fist jab" when the Obamas bumped knuckles on the night he clinched the nomination. Hill has apologized.

The Obama campaign's Web site is a bold move, said Republican pollster Whit Ayres, one that acknowledges the realities of the new information marketplace.

"I suppose some people might say that repeating the charge is a downside," Ayres said. "But the charge is out there and being repeated, and you don't have to talk to too many people before you realize that."

Before the dawn of the Internet, campaigns trusted that fact-checking editors would limit circulation of false rumors. Not anymore.

"They've got to do something," said Paul Begala, a fixture of Bill Clinton's war room in the 1992 campaign. "These smears and lies have persisted now for months, and the worst thing to do is ignore them. John Kerry's strategists thought no one would believe that he hadn't won those medals, and they were wrong."