Something I said a few days ago in another thread:
I don't see [...] Obama [...] sitting back and ignoring a smear campaign the way Kerry did.
Via the
Guardian:
Barack Obama is recruiting senior staff to a new unit which will combat virulent rumour campaigns on the internet that threaten to cost him votes in the presidential election against John McCain.
GOOD.
We no longer live in an era of refusing to dignify a smear campaign with a response. Even the most absurd, raving innuendo can now worm its way into conventional wisdom.
My first encounter with the "Obama is a secret Muslim" chain E-Mail (though I'd heard the phony madrassa story awhile before) was from a cousin of mine who's a reliable Democrat but has a lot of fringe Republicans in her immediate family. I pinned her ears back for it and she protested that she'd gotten it from a "reliable source"; she'd never heard of Snopes so I produced quotes from various mainstream news outlets repudiating the story, plus one from Fox News backing away from it. At that point she dropped the subject but I don't think I changed her mind. Though I suspect she's probably one of the crowd who shifted from "He's a Muslim!" to "The pastor at his church hates America!" without skipping a beat.
I don't know the best way for Obama to counter the rumors, but I am very reassured to know that he's working on it. Hopefully the people he's got on it know what they're doing -- up to this point he seems to have picked up very competent advisors with a good understanding of how to run a modern campaign.