Anti-Semitism at Obama's Official Page: The Gotcha Update

It turns out that there's some funky subterraneanism in all the allegations of anti-Semitism at Barack Obama's official campaign page. As I noted in my update on this today, the community blog for Jemaah Islamiyah for Obama host anti-Semitic statements, and this is the group responsible for some of the most destructive terrorist attacks early this decade.

Well, the post was planted, by Urban Grind:

For those of you not familiar with the Barack Obama website, individuals can put up blogs on there to support of their beloved candidate. And there have been plenty of controversial blogs on there, such as the New Black Panthers, for one. And there were two controversial blogs there, put up by Socialist for Obama. One was How The Jewish Lobby Works. The other one was The Israeli Connection to 9/11, which have recently been removed.

If it wasn’t for bloggers such as Pamela from Atlas Shrugs and Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, among others, these blogs would most likely still be up there....

I made a page called Jemaa Islamiyah, and called myself Fatima. And sure enough, there was no message saying that my page would have to be approved by an administrator. It went up immediately. And this was back in March. I was surprised at the friendly welcoming comments I received. In fact, I even received an invitation from one guy to be a friend.

Just to refresh your memory, Jemaa Islamiyah was the group behind the Bali bombing. And just so you know, that page is still up on the Obama site.

Now some of you might think what I did was bad. And I can see your point.

But let me remind you that Barack Obama is running as President of the United States. So his people had damn well better know about Jemaa Islamiyah! So as I see it, the fact that “Fatima’s” page is still up there proves to me that the Obama people are either extremely ignorant, OR that they welcome support of terrorist organizations because they share that same hatred of America and the JOOOS. Neither one is a good sign....

Update: On the same day that I put up the Jemaa Islamiyah page, I also put up another blog called Al Qaeda for Obama using the name “Fatima” as well.

I completely forgot about this, until I found a comment at Little Green Footballs that the page was still up. Naturally, I assumed they would remove such a page, since I had trouble finding it after I posted it. But of course the Obama people left it up.

Urban Grind's remarks are similar those I made this morning: Why would the Obama campaign tolerate hatred and terrorist views on its official page?

Now though, the allegation of anti-Semitism have become gotcha politics, with John Aravosis' post unearthing John McCain's comment boards for a variety of anti-Semitic views found there (and which I repudiate fully and unequivocally).

But check Firedoglake, with its interpretation of what's really going on (allegations of "rodent fornication"):

Funny how LGF somehow knew exactly how to find that particular comment on that particular blog, eh...?

But the RF's media trajectory was about to be interrupted with some heavy doses of reality. Bloggers such as John Aravosis and JedReport pointed out, using screen shots, that much more nasty stuff can be found on John McCain's website -- where Hillary is called a "bitch", and where somebody says that the "Antichrist" is a Jew, and that America brought 9/11 on itself, in addition to Obama's allegedly being a "Muslim fag".

Unlike with the planted RF on the Obama site, these nasty comments on the McCain site don't draw 100% condemnation, but often praise, thus indicating that they are posted by genuine McCain supporters who know what will be allowed on his site. As Aravosis noted, even though the McCain site allows for flagging of offensive comments, many of them have been on the McCain site for weeks and months; the oldest example dates to December of 2007 -- so either nobody's flagging these things, or the McCain webmasters couldn't care less.

So, who's "winning" this debate? Here's JedReport, posting at Daily Kos:

Yesterday, the Little Green Freakshow (aka Little Green Footballs) lied when it claimed that Barack Obama's website reveals a disturbing pattern of antisemitism. Edit: Also see this post from Comments from Left Field on how the stuff they did find was likely an example of cut-n-paste political sabotage.)

Well, I can now report to you that their ridiculous claim has also blown up in their face -- apparently, LGF forgot to check if there was any objectionable filth on any of their man John McCain's official campaign forums, and not surprisingly, it turns out there is. In fact, a quick check last night revealed at least one use of the N-word to describe Barack Obama, among other smears.I can't attest to whether LGF "forgot" to check for filthy posts on John McCain's blog pages.

I can say that, frankly, JedReport should take his own medicine while posting at Kos, since the virulently anti-Semitic Kos diary, "Eulogy before the Inevitability of Self-Destruction: The Decline and Death of Israel," remains available at the blog. As I've said many times, Kos claims that his blog represents the "mainstream" of the Democratic Party, but he refuses to take corrective measures to eliminate the hatred from his own platform.

Futher, there seems to be a convenient disconnect between the relative qualitative significance betweeen the online excrement at the McCain and Obama pages. As Gateway Pundit has pointed out, orignal webpage content and blog comments are distinct political animals. Comment boards are naturally going to attract freaky ideologial rif-raff, but Obama's site opens up its campaign site to any and all who want to post the most vile disease-ridden hatred, and then there's no effort to take this stuff down independent of cries of outrage around the blogosphere.

And then we have Firedoglake claiming their folks represent the "reality-based community"?

The swift response of the reality-based side of the blogosphere to shoot down this RF did not go unnoticed....

This sort of thing is only going to get more common, not less. But so long as we in the reality-based side of the blogosphere are ready to shoot down these RFs at first sight, we can keep them from causing damage...

Everyone wants to claim moral superiority on this. Yet there's little serious discussion about what needs to be done. All of these posts, on both campaign pages, have links to flag offensive commentary, and should both campaigns continue to welcome partisan community involvement, it's incumbent that more serious moderation needs to happen as this campaign pushes forward.

But one last point: As is clear so far, the RF'd posts at Obama's page originated in the extreme right-wing of the party, factions favorable to Ron Paul's presidential bid, as well as others, groups who have been officially repudiated by John McCain!

By contrast, some of the most central Obama supporters in the far-left blogosphere endorse the most evil anti-Semitic eliminationism, and Obama promotes this obscenity with his blogging communities.

The hard-left's "reality-based community" might be better served by seriously vetting their own establishment commentators and webpages before playing gotcha. Indeed, the left's mandarins can begin by denouncing the "reality" of hardline anti-Semitism at the base of the Obama movement, at home among its top blog commenters of the leftosphere, as well as at the community webpages of the party's presumptive nominee.