Posted on 07/09/2008 10:07:48 PM PDT by kristinn
...How important is calumny today? In 2000, calumny effectively led to John McCain's defeat in South Carolina. That smear campaign against him used robo-calls and fliers, and e-mail also played an important role, as the New York Times reported in February 2000. Arguably, calumny defeated John Kerry in 2004, and the infamous Swift boat television ads of that summer were, importantly, preceded by an aggressive Internet campaign begun that January that included perhaps the first viral campaign e-mail: a computer-generated image of Kerry and Jane Fonda beside each other on a podium at an antiwar rally. The image originally emerged at the Web site FreeRepublic.com, and Fonda had not in fact been at the event. But the damage was done. Today we are seeing viral anti-Obama e-mails, some of which I have traced to some of the same origin points for the 2000 and 2004 smear campaigns.
SNIP
A right to free speech is no excuse for lying. While strongly protected rights of free speech are critical to a healthy democracy, rights bring responsibilities. Citizens should, as a standard practice, take responsibility for their views -- the matters of fact and principle that they wish to put before the public for consideration -- by appending their full, legal names to their expressions, even in blog posts. While there are times and places for anonymity, it should be the exception. Unfortunately, the Internet has brought us to a point where anonymity is the rule, not the exception. Rather than facilitating free speech, this is corrosive to democratic discourse. It's time to rebuild a responsible culture in which people speak in their full, legal names and honor the truth.
SNIP
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Of course.
They are both very successful black women from Chicago, for one thing.
Danielle Allen is/was "Professor in Classical Languages & Literatures, Political Science and the Committee on Social Thought," at the University of Chicago. That is, she's not only an "academic," but a thoroughly useless one.
Michelle Obama earns $300,000 plus as "diversity coordinator for University of Chicago Hospitals. That is, she is on the payroll and takes a commission for her husband's "earmarks" to that hospital system.
So yeah, they're both cut from the same scummy piece of cloth.
"Sistahs".
I’m sure their paths have crossed numberous times.
"Hey, girlfriend. 'Sup?"
Some years back, I was contacted by an SF reporter using an alias here at FR. I look back now, and perhaps I should have forwarded the information onto Admin/Jim Robinson. I just deleted the email. I knew who the reporter was, in real time. I never saw a posting by this reporter using his FR monicker. And I looked.
I think in future, it would behoove Freepers, when they receive such communications, to do something constructive, like forward it to admin. After all, it is JimRob's "house", and he'd probably like to know who's trying to enter his home using "windows", and the patio door, instead of by knocking at the front door.
Weegee, your point is superb in re Miss Allen & Co.
Can any of us forget how a fellow freeper was set up by the Maryland Democrat Party machinery in collusion with a leftwing MSM rag?
~~~~
"But aides stressed that Kerry and Fonda were only acquaintances, and the meeting took place two years before Fonda took a controversial trip behind enemy lines and posed for pictures on a North Vietnam army anti-aircraft gun which prompted her angry detractors to dub her "Hanoi Jane."
*snip*
""My reaction is that the American people have had it with the big lie," she told CNN Wednesday. "Any attempts to link Kerry to me and make him look bad with that connection is completely false. We were at a rally for veterans at the same time. I spoke, Donald Sutherland spoke, John Kerry spoke at the end. I don't even think we shook hands."
~~~~
So, who's lying?
Same university complex.
She planned on “writing” when she left UIC. Too bad it’s not working out.
~~~~
“Danielle Allen, the current dean of the Humanities, is leaving the University to take a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.
I have received an unusual opportunity to focus on my own research and scholarship and so have accepted appointment as the UPS Foundation Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,
Allen said in an e-mail interview. This was a difficult decision and it is with real regret that I decided to step down from the deanship, but I do have a lot that I would like to write.
~~~
Engage some sane powers of deduction and logic, Danielle.
I doubt Ms. Allen has any clue as to whom you are referring.
You seem to be the right people to get the below info to.
Allen and the WashPost attack alleged smearing of Obama by stories suggesting that Obama is or was a Muslim. They attack the open forum on FreeRepublic.com and investigated two of the posters that Allen and WaPo accuse of slander.
Yet the same “Obama is/was a Muslim” stories were posted months ago to the WaPo website per below. Amazingly, the latest Allen piece attacks the posting of anonymous comments because defamation occurs, even though the WaPo website allows and encourages such posting.
Incredibly, the WaPo trashes FreeRepublic.com for accepting anonymous comments when THAT VERY ARTICLE OF THE POST IS SET UP TO ACCEPT ANONYMOUS COMMENTS, INCLUDING SMEARS OF OBAMA, BUSH, MCCAIN, OR ANYONE.
Will the WaPo do a series of exposees on those putting the same “Obama is/was a Muslim” stories on the WaPo website?
What about those at the WaPo website repeatedly posting the “Bush lied, people died” slander (consider that the WMDs were said to be in Iraq by all, including President Clinton) and similar anti-Bush slanders? Or those WaPo website posters repeatedly posting “McCain is a war criminal” and similar calumny? When will the WaPo go after those people who use the Post itself to spread lies?
Is there a Pulitzer Prize for Hypocrisy? The Washington Post would have a lock on it.
-— SOME OF BELOW HAVE SLIGHT VARIATIONS ON THE “OBAMA IS/WAS A MUSLIM” EMAIL FIRST DISCUSSED
IN THE ORIGINAL WAPO ALLEN-INSPIRED ARTICLE -———
Dec 15, 2007
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2007/12/14/a_word_on_obama_1.html
Jan 23, 2008
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/comments/display?contentID=BL2007012200260
Jan 24, 2008 (some of the same language, but different version of the
“Obama is a Muslim” claim)
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/clinton_vs_obama_on_cnn.html
May 12, 2008 (some of the same language, but different version of the
“Obama is a Muslim” claim)
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/2008/05/jews_for_obama_oy_vey.html
May 26, 2008
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-talk/2008/05/clinton_pledges_to_stay_in_cam.html
May 27, 2008
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/05/veepstakes_novak_on_sebelius.html
Great job!
Just an FYI
http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0008/features/index.htm
~~~
And to think she’s paid just to think.
Well actually free speech is an excuse for lying if the liar is a liberal. Notice how if the liberal says something considered controversial the ONLY things to be debated or discussed is whether they had the right to say it. However, if the conservative says something considered controversial then free speech is of course "no excuse". The MSM then debates whether the conservatives opinions were divisive or mean or hateful. We are seeing this in some other countries where christian Bible teachers are not allowed to preach what the Bible says on certain issues like homosexuality because it might "offend" certain people. Liberals and their friends in the MSM want to silence free speech for conservatives but they can't do it under the guise of free speech so they silence conservatives under the guise that it's offensive or intolerant.
So the LameStream Media is going to give the full names of all their sources who are undermining the war on Islamo-Facists??
The founders never would have put freedom of speech in the Constitution if they had known that people would use it to disagree with libs.
(/sarcasm)
The plot is afoot.
For a “razor sharp” mind, Dr. Allen just cant cut the intellectual cheese on this one.
Demanding “balance” or “equilibrium” in every discourse is not only against the natural order of things, but is actually the first tool used by the thought police to stifle robust criticism.
So, the Swift Boat Vets had the weight of facts, evidence and witnesses on their side! John Kerry could have been as complete by coming back with even heavier facts, evidence and witnesses. That is what the give and take of politics is all about. When everyone has a megaphone, calumny doesn’t work.
It’s a good thing Dr. Allen wasn’t king when Thomas Paine and the pamphleteers were stiring thing up in the colonies. The internet blogs, today, are our insightful
pamphleteers and Allen is a tool of the MSM to muzzle them.
A lot like the MD4Bush story (about the "affairs" of Md's then candidate/now their governor) that the Post did a few years back; and Matthew Mosk was a player in that story, too.
IIRC, somebody at the Washington Post was logging onto FR during the comment period on those threads. I seem to recall Jim saying that the Washington Post IP was posting on those threads, but my memory could be faulty.
I do remember that Jim did not "give up" any real-life names involved in those threads, so as not to set a precedent that could possibly force him to give up our (us legitimate Freepers) real-life names to slimy muckrakers like those who ooze about the Washington Post offices.
The Washington Post and other Barack Hussein Obama cheerleaders do seem to have a bug in their craw about wanting to know who we all are. My advice to the Washington Post, Matthew Mosk, Danielle Allen is simple and sincere... go pound sand. Oh, and quit stalking us.
The media gets stuff wrong, makes stuff up, distorts things and outright lies, but it’s all good.
We just need to silence those we disagree with.
I wonder if this woman he talks about in the beginning also aided the Treasurer from Zaire that I get mail from every so often....
They'll do that anyway. They will not allow any contrary evidence on the table, no matter what. The Swifties presented a solid wall of blistering fact, sans parody, and for thanks the press turned their group name into a cuss word, which is now bandied about liberally (pun intended).
A lie makes it half way round the world before the truth gets its boots on.
If someone wants to doctor a photo for a joke, put Bozo the clown in the background or Homie the Clown or SOMETHING to show that it is obviously doctored for a joke. Even that is fraught with peril because it allows the press to say “fake photos circulating out of FR with John Kerry and Jane Fonda (and Homie the Clown they will leave out, or the fact that there is an authentic picture, just not the one someone wanted).
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