Richard Dawkins on the surreal experience of being the subject of a Sunday Telegraph "gotcha" article.
posted by Artw on Feb 19, 2012 - 167 comments

Rusty Shackleford over at right-wing anti-Muslim jihad blog The Jawa Report has posted that the Obama campaign, in an effort to portray Sarah Palin a member of the secessionist Alaska Independence Party, is engaged in a smear campaign through the use of viral video and astroturf techniques on You Tube. [more inside]
posted by Skygazer on Sep 24, 2008 - 73 comments

Fancy Ford is the most elegant-looking political smear site you've ever seen. But is there a racial message?
posted by barjo on Mar 10, 2006 - 47 comments

The Rumor is spreading. The Tallahassee Democrat gets up to 10 calls and emails a day asking why they haven't printed it. Vanity Fair is sort of writing about it in its July issue, they say. The Internet is all abuzz. But it seems that nobody can prove The Rumor, so instead they're simply going to keep talking about the fact the rumor exists until either someone comes forward with documentable proof, or until practically everyone knows about it anyway and thus the desired damage is done, regardless of whether The Rumor is true or not. It seems to have something to do with high-ranking Republican Florida state government officials and blowjobs, though. The same old "friend of a friend heard that Jeb and Katherine Harris are lovers" BS, or something newer? Doesn't the media have a responsibility to keep their trap shut until and unless they can come up with some real proof, rather than forcing it to come out by making the lack of provability into a so-called news story?
posted by aaron on May 11, 2001 - 42 comments