Lies, Campaign Lies and Internet Lies as D-Day Approaches

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So you know when John McCain has to defend Barack Obama from McCain’s own supporters less than a week before the duo’s last debate, you know the old guy’s campaign’s got it bad and that ain’t good. T-Minus 7 and counting.

You’ve heard all about it by now: At a McCain town-hall meeting/rally in Minnesota a few weeks ago, a woman said she didn’t trust Obama because she had heard he was an Arab (read: Muslim sand n&#$$). Shaking his head in opposition to her broadcasted ignorance, McCain had to step in: “No ma’am, no ma’am. He’s a decent family man… [a] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues. That’s what this campaign is all about.”

Then there was that dude who told McCain he was literally scared of an Obama administration. Again, McCain found his conscience. “I want to be president of the United States, and I don’t want Obama to be,” McCain told the scared white man, unofficial representative of The Real America. “But I have to tell you, I have to tell you, he is a decent person, and a person that you do not have to be scared [of] as president of the United States.” So McCain The Straight Talker was booed (!) for not publicly calling his opponent a left-handed sushi-eater or a follower of Minister Farrakhan.

Is it McCain’s chickens roosting, or roasting? Politricking or not, U.S. Rep. John “Did-You-Know-I-Was-In-The-Civil-Rights-Movement?-No,-The-Real- One—with-Dr.-King!” Lewis (D-Ga.) was right in saying the whole thing reminded him of a George Wallace for President rally—before he realized he had told the truth in a 24-hour news cycle and subsequently “clarified” his statements. (Attention, Kids: In Washington, D.C., we’re taught that a gaffe is when a politician doesn’t think before he speaks, and winds up saying what he really thinks. You fix a gaffe by going back and “clarifying” what you said. F.Y.I. Now Back To Our Show.)  In response, McCain called Lewis’ original clarity as “shocking and beyond the pale.” Here’s some more: “The notion that legitimate criticism of Sen. Obama’s record and positions could be compared to Gov. George Wallace, his segregationist policies and the violence he provoked is unacceptable and has no place in this campaign. I am saddened that John Lewis, a man I’ve always admired, would make such a brazen and baseless attack on my character and the character of the thousands of hard-working Americans who come to our events to cheer for the kind of reform that will put America on the right track.”

Uh-huh. Good dive, airman. That’s what people who are on the way to losing their homes and eating their third straight week of Spam care about—John Lewis’ memories of 1972. For The Senator and The Governor, though, the congressman’s remark was right on time. It gave them another Wall Street-less hour on tv this past weekend. If they win, they should give Lewis his very own Confederate flag and and a one-year subscription to The Weekly Standard.

The newspapers I don’t read that much anymore are saying that both campaigns are getting “rough.” You know, doing that stupid journalistic “balance” thang that shows their “objectivity.” Well, they’re only two-thirds true. Biden is getting rough on the stump. Obama’s Web ads are getting rough (read: he’s lying, too). But Palin is out for blood. Meanwhile, the Left and Right talking heads have begun to interrupt each other—and even shout a little—on the Sunday chat-fests. And McCain? He’s wandering around in his mind, mike in hand, getting in the way of the teleprompter of history. Damn. He seems actually worried that future historians may judge him by the tenor of this campaign. Good.

I wanted what NPR would call “a panel of experts” to educate me about the lives of campaign lies. But it was Sunday, and they were probably either in church or watching football. So I went to factcheck.org and politifact.org. Here’s what I learned about both campaigns. Well, color me green and call me The Great Gazoo! J Both candidates are lying their asses off!

A couple of Obama’s current lies, from his ads:

• Obama makes it seem that McCain’s Social Security plan would immediately have tied up all that moolah in the stock market. Not true; McCain backed a voluntary plan, and only some of the money would have wound up on Wall Street. And no, the money that would have been invested there would not have ended up directly in AIG and the other fallen titans.
• McCain is for stem-cell research. Obama’s nose should be growing bigger than his ears.

A couple of McCain’s current lies, from his ads:

• Obama and his “terrorist” associate from a buncha years ago, William Ayers, did not run “a radical education association”; they were part of a board that ran a program approved by the (Republican) governor of Illinois. A Republican—a McCain contributor!—was even on the group’s board!
• When Obama said that troops in Afghanistan were doing nothing but bombing and killing civilians, he was criticizing the Bush Administrations’ strategy, not American soldiers. And he didn’t vote against funding for the troops; he voted for cutting off the loot if Bush didn’t bring them home, since the bill was about getting them outtathere.

Of course, the most important lies have been told, and understood by everyone to be lies, but are believed anyway. Like the lie that President Obama’s going to order up free chicken and ribs for Southeast Washington, D.C., and play his Rick James CDs on the White House lawn before issuing an executive order instituting reparations for all Black people, including your real light-skinned-ded relatives who “passed” a generation ago. The lie that Obama will be something more than Bill Clinton in Blackface.  (Get ready for the 1990s all over again, just without all those dot-com jobs, new episodes of “Friends” and O.J. jokes.) Then there’s the slightly more damaging lie on the other side—the one that says McCain is a “different” kind of Republican. Didn’t we hear that same tale from Double-U in 2000? Fool them twice, shame on them.

P.S. Did you hear that Palin’s church thinks Obama may be the Anti-Christ? (Or was that Biden’s?) And what about Obama having two in-wedlock Black babies? (Thanks, “Saturday Night Live,” for that last one! J Isn’t it great that people are talking about that show again? Shades of Buckwheat getting shot way back when….)

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