Black Box Report

You might think the Obama-turban photo would be the product of some rightwing Swift Boat group, but according to Matt Drudge, it actually came from a member of Hillary Clinton's campaign. When reached for comment, her campaign had the chutzpah to first turn it around and say Obama should be "ashamed" for claiming the photo is "divisive." After all, politicians wear native clothing on foreign visits all the time! But Obama isn't just any politician, and this wasn't just any traditional native clothing:

What Mr. Obama is wearing is NOT a Kenyan elder's garb, but a Somali elder's garb. This is quite an important difference...in view of the fact that Kenya is 90% Christian and Somalia is 100% Sunni Muslim...So whatever else Mr. Obama was doing, he was sending an unfortunate message. And I, for one, see no harm whatsoever in pointing that out.

"An unfortunate message." 'Cause if he's dressed like a Muslim, he must be a terrorist sympathizer! Aren't all Muslims? And, by the way, have we mentioned his middle name is Hussein?!?! Think about it!

But as Clinton's campaign took their sweet time yesterday disavowing a connection to the photo, people began to speculate, taking their silence as confirmation:

...it is a sign of the desperation of Team Clinton...pretty nasty stuff, with its "he’s a Muslim and it should bother you" undertone...Twenty-four hours from now I suspect we’ll see virtually the entire Democratic establishment, and many others, condemning this tactic. It’ll advance the storyline that the Clinton campaign is spinning out of control – lurching from melancholy valedictory comments one day to faux outrage the next – and in its dying days.

During tomorrow evening’s debate, Hillary Clinton will be on the defensive and very much regret this stupid and ugly effort.

Other than that, it was a swell idea.

After hours of issuing non-denials, Hillary's campaign finally disowned the photo, although, with 700 people on staff, they're not 100% sure it didn't come from them (it wouldn't be the first time one of their local staffers went off the reservation on this same topic). Nor do they seem terribly concerned about looking into it. Having achieved some measure of plausible deniability, the simple fact that the photo is out there and part of the campaign narrative serves them as well as if it had come from them. But before anyone assumes that Clinton has actually gotten desperate enough to adopt the sleaziest of rightwing talking points, keep in mind where all this started:

Matt Drudge, a proven and repeated inventor of facts and serial slimer of Dems, reported that unnamed Hillary "staffers" had "circulated" this email and photo. He didn't say who the staffers were or at what level they exist in the campaign. He didn't say who the photo was circulated to...When it comes right down to it, nobody has any evidence of the existence of this email beyond what Drudge said.

Drudge gets to run the Obama-is-a-scary-Muslim! pic, and blame Clinton for it. It's a two-fer!