Debunking anti-Obama e-mails

Error-filled chain e-mails designed to scare voters away from Barack Obama are circulating widely on the Internet. Salon deconstructs a pair, one smearing the candidate, the other his wife.

By Mike Madden

Read more: Racial Issues, Politics, News, Muslims, Barack Obama, 2008 election, Michelle Obama, Mike Madden

Aug. 20, 2008 | WASHINGTON -- One of the presidential campaign's most pitched battles is already blazing away. But the action won't be coming to you live from Denver or St. Paul in the next two weeks, pollsters can barely track it and -- most important -- there aren't any rules.

For months, anonymous e-mail chain letters, blog posts and message board items attacking Barack Obama have been flying around the country. Obama's campaign is concerned enough about the rumor mill to devote an entire Web site to fighting them. While some of the messages are blatantly false, the most dangerous ones mix lies and out-of-context facts just well enough to sound legit, playing not too subtly on racism and ignorance to make the truths they include sound sinister. (Now a book that basically collects some of the bogus accusations by Jerome Corsi is sitting at the top of the New York Times bestseller list.)

Two such messages, circulating by e-mail and popping up in comments on blogs for months, are reproduced below -- and annotated and debunked, point by point -- to illustrate the tactics Obama's been up against for most of the campaign. The first e-mail attacks the candidate's wife, attempting to paint Michelle Obama –- and by extension, Barack Obama -- as an America-hating black separatist radical. Democratic pollsters say many voters don't know much about Michelle Obama. This e-mail, which began circulating during the Democratic primaries, seems to be a deliberate attempt to fill in a mostly blank mental canvas with negative associations before the Obama campaign can tell her story itself.

A second, more recent e-mail, received just a few days ago, shows that the spurious but very durable belief that Obama is a Muslim continues to ricochet around the Internet. Follow along (any typos and punctuation errors are in the original e-mails) as we deconstruct two anti-Obama e-mails:

According to Snopes.com, Princeton was requested to put a "restriction" on distribution of any copies of the thesis of Michelle Obama (a/k/a Michelle laVaughn Robinson) saying it could not be made available until November 5, 2008 but when it was published on a political website they decided they would lift the restriction.

Right from the start, the message purports to be authenticated by Snopes, the urban-legend-busting site that's already compiled a list of nearly two dozen phony allegations against Obama. By the time the e-mail started circulating widely, though, Snopes had already debunked most of it, and Princeton's restriction had already been lifted. It wasn't clear why Princeton refused to release it, but it eventually got wide distribution to the media after Politico published it. And how did it obtain a copy? It asked the campaign, which promptly handed it over.

Subj: Thesis - Michele Obama aka Michelle LaVaughn Robinson

OBAMA'S MILITANT RACISM REVEALED

In her senior thesis at Princeton, Michele Obama, the wife of Barack Obama stated that America was a nation founded on "crime and hatred." Moreover, she stated that whites in America were "ineradicably racist."

Actually, that's a lie -- she doesn't make either of those statements anywhere in the 64-page thesis or the appendices, which tabulate answers to a survey she conducted of black Princeton alumni and then include the survey form. The thesis, entitled "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community," comes to a conclusion that might not shock most college graduates -- black students identified strongly with other blacks while at Princeton, but after graduating, their attachment to the black community decreased. (If there's a major flaw with the thesis, it probably lies in how Obama mostly brushes off class issues within the black community; Princeton alumni, no matter what race they are, have more in common with other elite university graduates than with anyone else.)

But rather than revealing "MILITANT RACISM" (or even the less threatening lowercase version), the thesis actually shows Obama rejecting stereotypes. "An individual who is more personally comfortable with Blacks than with Whites on an individual level need not hold political ideologies which support the separation of Blacks and Whites on a community level," she writes.

The 1985 thesis, titled "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community" was written under her maiden name, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson.

Like the opening reference to "Michelle Obama (a/k/a Michelle laVaughn Robinson)," the line about the thesis being "written under her maiden name" seems designed to imply an attempt by Obama to hide her association with her husband when she wrote the thesis. Of course, in reality, Michelle Obama was 21 years old when the thesis was published, and the Obamas wouldn't marry until seven years later. Throughout the e-mail, the author keeps referring to "Mrs. Obama" to make readers think Barack Obama had something to do with his wife's alleged racism.

Michelle Obama stated in her thesis that to "Whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, she will always be Black first ..." However, it was reported by a fellow black classmate, "If those 'Whites at Princeton' really saw Michelle as one who always would 'be Black first,' it seems that she gave them that impression."

It's not clear who this "fellow black classmate" is or whether this quote is real. It certainly doesn't appear in the thesis, and a Nexis search for a phrase like the one the e-mail quotes only turns up two hits, both of which seem to be quoting the e-mail.

Most alarming is Michele Obama's use of the terms "separationist" and "integrationist" when describing the views of black people. Mrs. Obama clearly identifies herself with a "separationist" view of race.

"By actually working with the Black lower class or within their communities as a result of their ideologies, a separationist may better understand the desperation of their situation and feel more hopeless about a resolution as opposed to an integrationist who is ignorant to their plight."

Obama writes that the path she chose by attending Princeton would likely lead to her "further integration and/or assimilation into a white cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant ..."

Obama didn't invent the "separationist" and "integrationist" terms, though the e-mail makes it sound like she did. The history of the terms is detailed in a long literature review at the beginning of the thesis. More important, Michelle Obama doesn't endorse either view anywhere in the text.

Next page: "This is a very divisive view for a potential first lady that would do untold damage to race relations in this country in a Barack Obama administration"