Poisoning the Well | OurFuture.org

The hate mail against Obama controversy continues ...

WHEN THE LEVEE BREAKS .... in response to last Saturday night's Blue Barn Radio where during the last hour readers responded to a hate Obama email I asked about, a reader forwards this link and the one below by Rick Perlstein. Tom Sullivan writes: [excerpt] "...E-mail smears may be a cottage industry of the most radical blog partisans. Or, as with the administration efforts listed above, they might be something more sophisticated. (Anyone with information on the latter is encouraged to speak up.) Either way, the last decade and a half has seen a steady erosion of capital-T truth. Propaganda has been raised to an art form by an administration populated with doubt-free, "right-wing exuberants" disdainful of “the reality-based community.” Because it is mostly invisible, there may be a tendency to dismiss such spam as stupid or unimportant ... But that misses the point. First, it would not circulate so widely if it were not reinforcing what traffickers wish to believe (and what propagandists want them to believe). How widespread this phenomenon is has not been studied, to my knowledge, but should be. It is antithetical to the ideal of an informed electorate. Second, because these e-mails are part of a “death by a thousand cuts” strategy against opponents; they are meant to be disposable, water-cooler lies. Because many are snidely humorous, obvious errors are dismissed in a breezy, Coulteresque “it’s just a joke” way, and forwarded to friends anyway so they can be in on the fun. Thus the poison spreads from in-box to in-box like ant bait. ..."

Have they Poisoned the Well ? Image hat tip where you make your own yard placard!