Michelle...Cindy... watch your backs!

The following is from "War Room," by Alex Koppelman at Salon.

Fox News. Wednesday, June 11. "During a segment discussing conservative attacks against Michelle Obama, the wife of presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama, the network described the former as 'Obama's baby mama.'"

What the hell is that supposed to mean? We all know that Fox News is not about "news" at all, but propaganda. With this kind of slam, however, Fox sinks to a new low!

The segment was anchored by Megyn Kelly and featured the hateful conservative blogger, Michelle Malkin. "...at one point, Malkin says, 'By the way, it's not just Republicans who are criticizing some of her comments, but also statements have been made in the left-leaning blog Salon about her comments."

Mr. Koppelman says he's searched the Salon site and "can't find anything like what Malkin is talking about." Koppelman emailed Malkin who finally responded to say she was mistaken and meant to refer to Slate, not Salon.

The point, however, is not that Malkin makes mistakes. That's normal for her. The point is that the Malkin and the other nasties are coming out of the woodwork and attacking not just Obama but his wife, Michelle. Maureen Dowd in The New York Times warned that "Now Republicans can turn their full attention to demonizing Michelle Obama."

Dowd then went on, as is her wont, to name some of the nasty rumors floating in cyberspace about Michelle. One involved a videotape in which she supposedly denounced "whitey." But Dowd did say that such attacks might come back on the Republicans. After all, "[Michelle] Obama worked her way up from modest childhood roots to reach Harvard Law School, while Cindy McCain inherited a brewery fortune."

Nothing will stop the attacks, though. The Tennessee Republican Party, known for neither integrity nor honor, has put together a video with Michelle's "famous" comment how "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country," as if there is nothing in our country of which we should not be proud! Michelle Malkin, the rattler named above, calls Michelle Obama "Obama's bitter half," and the right wing National Review printed a cover story about her with the title, "Mrs. Grievance."

Robert A. George who is a "conscientious" conservative, notes that there is no such "whitey" tape as mentioned above. He says "This is the '08 version of a really weird conservative urban legend that pops up every four years. The names change, but the basics remain the same: 1) It always involves the wife of the Democratic presidential candidate; 2) it always portrays the wife -- not the candidate -- committing some anti-American, unpatriotic act."

Vincent Rossmeier, in another article from Salon, describes how the legend worked in the past:

"In 1988, Idaho Sen. Steve Symms [a Republican, of course!] claimed that photographs existed of Kitty Dukakis burning a flag at an antiwar protext. No such photos ever emerged and Dukakis denied the charge.

"In 2004, John Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, grabbed headlines for her altercation with a Pittsburgh conservative editorial writer who said she had used the term 'un-American' in a speech. Kerry denied that she had used the phrase and told the writer to 'shove it.' Right-wing Web sites like World Net Daily also propagated unfounded rumors that Heinz Kerry had links to terrorists."


It would behoove the Repubs to play carefully with Michelle Obama in this election season. They have another wife, Cindy McCain, who is quite vulnerable to being slammed for miscreant behavior.

After all, John was smitten with this striking blonde and engaged in an affair with her before he dumped his first wife who had become crippled in a car accident. Cindy thus could be termed an adulteress, if one wanted to play that game.

Not only so, but Cindy became a drug addict a few years back. That's quite a story, and "supposedly" she's kicked the habit (see how easy it is to slip in a slur?), but who knows? Cindy's vulnerability, though, is not merely in the fact she became addicted to prescription drugs, but the fact that she stole them from the American Voluntary Medical Team, her own charity.


It was 1994 when Cindy first claimed to have kicked the habit. She was no longer addicted to Percocet and Vicodin. Amy Silverman, a reporter from Arizona, tells of how "[Cindy] granted semi-exclusive interviews to one TV station and three daily newspaper reporters in Arizona, tearfully recalling her addiction, which came about after painful back and knee problems and was exacerbated by the stress of the Keating Five scandal that had ensnared her husband...

"The local press cooed over her hard-luck story ...

"What ... [they] didn't know was that, far from being a simple honest admission designed to clear her conscience and help other addicts, Cindy McCain's storytelling had been orchestrated by Jay Smith, then John McCain's Washington campaign media advisor. And it was intended to divert attention from a different story, a story that was getting quite messy.

"I know," writes Ms. Silverman, "because I had been working on that story for months at Phoenix New Times. I had finally tracked down the public records that confirmed Cindy McCain's addiction and much more, and the McCains knew I was about to get them. Cindy's tale was released on the day the records were made public."

Ms. Silverman says that the real story was not so much Cindy's addiction but "about her efforts to keep that story from coming to light, and the possible manipulation of the criminal justice system by her husband and his cohorts."

The way it happened was that one of the McCain's high-powered lawyers, John Dowd, "tried to get back at the man on Cindy McCain's staff, Tom Gosinski, who had blown the whistle on her drug pilfering to the DEA. But in the course of trying to get local law enforcement officials to investigate Gosinski -- Dowd and the McCains considered him an extortionist; others might call him a whistleblower -- Dowd set in motion a process that would eventually bring the whole sordid story to light. When that maneuver backfired, the McCain media machine went into overdrive to spin the story.

"Get the story out -- even if it's a negative story. Get it out first, with the spin you want, with all the details you want and without the details you don't want.

"McCain did it with the Keating Five, and with the story of the failure of his first marriage ... So what you recall after the humble, honest interview, is not that McCain did favors for savings and loan failure Charlie Keating, or that he cheated on his wife, but instead what an upfront, righteous guy he is.

Candor is the McCain trademark, but what the journalists who slobber over the senator fail to realize is that the candor is premeditated and polished. John McCain shoots from the hip -- but only after carefully rehearsing the battle plan, to be sure he won't get shot himself."

Please read the rest of this excellent article by Ms. Silverman here.


And all you Michelle Malkins of the world - beware! The poison from your pen may flow back to stain your self-righteous souls!