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Obama Combats Dirty Politics Via the Web

by Evan Shamoon on June 18, 2008 at 12:06 PM



What with his understanding of all things newfangled, the Internet has been an enormous part of the fund-raising effort for Presidential hopeful Barack Obama. He's raised more than $265 million dollars, in fact, more than three times the amount raised by his Republican rival John McCain. Now, Obama is putting it to another use: Namely, fighting smear campaigns being run against him in his bid for the White House.

On Thursday, the Obama campaign unveiled a Web site called fightthesmears.com, which has a mission to debunk false rumors spawned and spread by right-wing media outlets. The move came after the recent (and unfounded) assertion by Rush Limbaugh (among others) that Obama's wife, Michelle, had been caught on tape slurring white people. Obama, of course, has been called everything from "Muslim extremist" to an "anti-American" -- and that was just during the primaries.

"We created an interactive tool to allow our supporters to fight back against these smears in the same way that they received them -- on the Internet," campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor said. "People can upload their address books and easily send fact-based emails to their friends and family. Just knowing the truth isn't enough -- you have to proactively tell people the truth to fight back."

Three cheers for truthiness. [Source: AFP/Yahoo]

Tags: breaking news, BreakingNews, elections, obama

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