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Forbes Breitbarted the Birther Smear of Obama

By: Sarah JonesSep. 25th, 2010more from Sarah Jones

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Obama Smears Proven False Again

Obama Smears Proven False Again

Newt Gingrich’s Anti-Colonial Source Outted, Forbes Humiliated

Breitbart, O’Donnell, and now Dinesh D’Souza. It’s like watching dominoes fall these days, as one by one, conservative extremists are outted for lying to the public. You know Dinesh, the “intellectual” who wrote the scathingly inaccurate “Obama is an anti-Colonial Kenyan tribe reviving OTHER” Forbes’ cover story that Newt Gingrich embraced and repeated. In fact, Newt’s still nattering on about anti-Colonialism, which I find beyond odd but then maybe where Newt’s from in Georgia, being anti-Colonial is a bad thing? No matter, now he’s got the whole flock of fools doing it (Limbaugh, Beck et al). Cue another decade of embarrassingly moronic far right conservatives screaming things that make no sense and that all reasonable people know to be untrue.

So, yeah, that Dinesh, he was just outted as having, um, well, not fact-checked his ode to persecution and paranoia that Forbes published without fact-checking. Forbes. It’s so bad that an editor at The Columbia Journalism Review called it, “the worst kind of smear journalism.” There was a day when Forbes stood for something, but they, too have been hijacked by the party of paranoia and are now prone to publishing outright fantasy while calling it fact and running it as their cover story.

Of course it was that liberal (and by liberal, I mean fact-oriented, accuracy-adjacent and reality-related) New York Times which bothered to follow up on the actual facts of the Dinesh’s bunker fetish of anti-Colonial fear porn:

“One of the most contentious points in Mr. D’Souza’s article was his citation of a transaction by the Export-Import Bank of the United States to finance offshore drilling in Brazil, a deal Mr. D’Souza believes indicates Mr. Obama is more concerned with helping countries that formerly were the domains of colonial powers, rather than Americans. A Forbes fact checker recently contacted the bank to check on the assertion that Mr. Obama supported the 2009 transaction with Petrobras, Brazil’s state-owned oil company. Mr. D’Souza asserted that Mr. Obama supported the deal, “not so oil ends up in the U.S. He is funding Brazilian exploration so that the oil can stay in Brazil.” A note written by Kevin Varney, the senior vice president and chief of staff of the bank, and posted in the comments section of Mr. D’Souza’s blog — and verified by a spokesman for the bank — criticized Mr. D’Souza for not contacting the bank before publication.
“I received a call yesterday from Nathan Verdi, a fact checker at Forbes, who was calling to fact check your article after it was published. (Is this how journalism works now?)”
And this:
Mr. Varney said that to cite the deal as evidence of “an anticolonial, Kenyan ideology” on the part of Mr. Obama is “preposterous, it’s false and it’s wrong.” “

Preposterous, false and wrong. Keep those words handy, friends, as you will be needing them often and I see no reason why you should have to exert yourselves coming up with new, nice ways to say “lie”. After all, you have better things to do than engage in appeasement with the enemy all day.

After Press Secretary Robert Gibbs asked if the Forbes piece was ever fact-checked and Forbes pulled the covers over its now humiliated self, Media Matters followed up with a list of questions that still need to be answered:

-Who assigned it?
-Who edited it?
-Did Steve Forbes see the final version before it was published?
-Did any senior editors object to the tone/content while it was in editing process?
-Was the article actually fact-checked?
-If so, who oversaw the fact-checking process?

On Thursday, Forbes posted a sort of mini-correction for another inaccurate part of Dinesh’s cover story (claiming Obama never had a plan to fix the oil spill), but they have yet to address the fundamental flaws, the made up facts, and their own failure to vet. Gosh that’s a recurring theme these days. The Forbes spokeswoman said this minor correction is the end of their fact-checking of this article. Well, that may be, Missy, but it’s not the end of America’s fact-checking of your magazine. Just FYI.

I can see the backs of Dinesh, Newt, O’Donnell and Bretibart as they flee accountability for their crimes of distortion and dishonesty from my kitchen window. I’m feeling like an expert already! Keep your eye on that propaganda as it flies into our airspace and tries to destroy America and her freedoms!

Running from the press? Scared of the liberal media? Sure looks like these clowns are pulling a Palin, but who can blame them, after all, hiding from the press is smart media strategy when it’s the only way for candidates as pathetic as an aborted mid-term governor who ran her state into the highest debt to GDP of any state to maintain their myth of being a “common sense conservative”. Yes, indeed, welcome to the Age of Fantasy Facts for Conservatives, who will now live on an entirely other planet than the rest of us.

Just months ago, it seemed that Palin was beneath the Republican Party, but the once Grand Old Party has lowered itself to her level, desperately clinging to the charismatic demagogue even as she sinks in the quicksand of her many lies and falling poll numbers. It’s terribly sad to see men like Newt Gingrich (as much as I dislike what he stands for, the man used to be rather intelligent) spewing pure paranoiac fantasy in their attempts to regain power. Lies, lies and more lies. It seems like the Right has gone off the rails these days. If one can’t make a case for their ideology and record and instead have to resort to making up stories about their opponents, maybe they shouldn’t be in the game.

This is just another attempted smear of the 44th President. Sadly, the smear will stick with the ever more marginalized Fox viewers who will never hear about Forbes’ humiliating turn at Breitbarting the magazine industry. Consider this process akin to winnowing grain; separating the wheat from the chaff. Only the sane will be left. This is one more narrative the Right threw at the President that reasonable people will see through.

How many times does this little boy have to cry wolf before Americans finally realize that certain elements need to be dismissed automatically, having been established as willfully consistent liars?

Americans await Forbes’ responses, as well as a retraction and formal, published apology from Dinesh, Newt and the rest of the festering balls of fear who’ve repeated this garbage. Tell us what you stand for, GOP. Tell us how you’re going to achieve your manifeto of jingles. Talk to us about policy. We see you tossing the hot ball of smears in an attempt to distract us, but we’re not falling for it this time. Game up.


Forbes Breitbarted the Birther Smear of Obama was written by Sarah Jones for PoliticusUSA.
© PoliticusUSA, Sep. 25th, 2010. All Rights Reserved

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