Two such messages, circulating by e-mail and popping up in comments on blogs for months, are reproduced below — and annotated and debunked, point by point — to illustrate the tactics Obama’s been up against for most of the campaign. The first e-mail attacks the candidate’s wife, attempting to paint Michelle Obama –- and by extension, Barack Obama — as an America-hating black separatist radical. Democratic pollsters say many voters don’t know much about Michelle Obama. This e-mail, which began circulating during the Democratic primaries, seems to be a deliberate attempt to fill in a mostly blank mental canvas with negative associations before the Obama campaign can tell her story itself.

A second, more recent e-mail, received just a few days ago, shows that the spurious but very durable belief that Obama is a Muslim continues to ricochet around the Internet. Follow along (any typos and punctuation errors are in the original e-mails) as we deconstruct two anti-Obama e-mails:

According to Snopes.com, Princeton was requested to put a “restriction” on distribution of any copies of the thesis of Michelle Obama (a/k/a Michelle laVaughn Robinson) saying it could not be made available until November 5, 2008 but when it was published on a political website they decided they would lift the restriction.

Right from the start, the message purports to be authenticated by Snopes, the urban-legend-busting site that’s already compiled a list of nearly two dozen phony allegations against Obama. By the time the e-mail started circulating widely, though, Snopes had already debunked most of it, and Princeton’s restriction had already been lifted. It wasn’t clear why Princeton refused to release it, but it eventually got wide distribution to the media after Politico published it. And how did it obtain a copy? It asked the campaign, which promptly handed it over.

Subj: Thesis – Michele Obama aka Michelle LaVaughn Robinson

OBAMA’S MILITANT RACISM REVEALED

In her senior thesis at Princeton, Michele Obama, the wife of Barack Obama stated that America was a nation founded on “crime and hatred.” Moreover, she stated that whites in America were “ineradicably racist.”

Actually, that’s a lie — she doesn’t make either of those statements anywhere in the 64-page thesis or the appendices, which tabulate answers to a survey she conducted of black Princeton alumni and then include the survey form. The thesis, entitled “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community,” comes to a conclusion that might not shock most college graduates — black students identified strongly with other blacks while at Princeton, but after graduating, their attachment to the black community decreased. (If there’s a major flaw with the thesis, it probably lies in how Obama mostly brushes off class issues within the black community; Princeton alumni, no matter what race they are, have more in common with other elite university graduates than with anyone else.)

But rather than revealing “MILITANT RACISM” (or even the less threatening lowercase version), the thesis actually shows Obama rejecting stereotypes. “An individual who is more personally comfortable with Blacks than with Whites on an individual level need not hold political ideologies which support the separation of Blacks and Whites on a community level,” she writes.

The 1985 thesis, titled “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community” was written under her maiden name, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson.

Like the opening reference to “Michelle Obama (a/k/a Michelle laVaughn Robinson),” the line about the thesis being “written under her maiden name” seems designed to imply an attempt by Obama to hide her association with her husband when she wrote the thesis. Of course, in reality, Michelle Obama was 21 years old when the thesis was published, and the Obamas wouldn’t marry until seven years later. Throughout the e-mail, the author keeps referring to “Mrs. Obama” to make readers think Barack Obama had something to do with his wife’s alleged racism.

Michelle Obama stated in her thesis that to “Whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, she will always be Black first …” However, it was reported by a fellow black classmate, “If those ‘Whites at Princeton’ really saw Michelle as one who always would ‘be Black first,’ it seems that she gave them that impression.”

It’s not clear who this “fellow black classmate” is or whether this quote is real. It certainly doesn’t appear in the thesis, and a Nexis search for a phrase like the one the e-mail quotes only turns up two hits, both of which seem to be quoting the e-mail.

Most alarming is Michele Obama’s use of the terms “separationist” and “integrationist” when describing the views of black people. Mrs. Obama clearly identifies herself with a “separationist” view of race.

“By actually working with the Black lower class or within their communities as a result of their ideologies, a separationist may better understand the desperation of their situation and feel more hopeless about a resolution as opposed to an integrationist who is ignorant to their plight.”

Obama writes that the path she chose by attending Princeton would likely lead to her “further integration and/or assimilation into a white cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant …”

Obama didn’t invent the “separationist” and “integrationist” terms, though the e-mail makes it sound like she did. The history of the terms is detailed in a long literature review at the beginning of the thesis. More important, Michelle Obama doesn’t endorse either view anywhere in the text.

The e-mail continues:

Michele Obama clearly has a chip on her shoulder. Not only does she see separate black and white societies in America, but she elevates black over white in her world. Here is another passage that is uncomfortable and ominous in meaning: “There was no doubt in my mind that as a member of the black community, I am obligated to this community and will utilize all of my present and future resources to benefit the black community first and foremost.” What is Michelle Obama planning to do with her future resources if she’s first lady that will elevate black over white in America?

This isn’t particularly subtle, even by the standards of the e-mail. The message is almost as clear as in the rumors, which the campaign denied, that some tape exists of Michelle Obama ranting about “whitey” — it’s basically, “watch out, white people.” (And cue up the image of Obama with an Afro and a machine gun, burning an American flag as she fist-bumps her husband in the Oval Office.)

But in the actual text of the thesis, Obama had distanced herself from the “ominous” passage cited here. The line the e-mail quotes actually begins, “Earlier in my college career,” and segues into a section where Obama acknowledges that her time at Princeton had given her the same kind of bourgeois values as her classmates of any race — she was mostly concerned with getting a prestigious job or going to another elite school for a graduate degree.

The following passage appears to be a call to arms for affirmative action policies that could be the hallmark of an Obama administration. “Predominately white universities like Princeton are socially and academically designed to cater to the needs of the white students comprising the bulk of their enrollments.”

That’s a stretch; if anything, that line calls for universities to do more to help nonwhite students cope with their minority status on campus (and given that virtually every university in the country has an office that does just that, it’s hardly a radical idea). Meanwhile, Barack Obama has been open enough to the idea of changing race-based affirmative action that it’s drawing some attention. When his daughters apply to college, Obama has said, they shouldn’t benefit from affirmative action admissions programs, because of their privileged upbringing.

The conclusion of her thesis is alarming. Michelle Obama’s poll of black alumni concludes that other black students at Princeton do not share her obsession with blackness. But rather than celebrate, she is horrified that black alumni identify with our common American culture more than they value the color of their skin. “I hoped that these findings would help me conclude that despite the high degree of identification with whites as a result of the educational and occupational path that black Princeton alumni follow, the alumni would still maintain a certain level of identification with the black community. However, these findings do not support this possibility.” Is it no wonder that most black alumni ignored her racist questionnaire? Only 89 students responded out of 400 who were asked for input.

This section takes an accurate quote, twists it into a different context, and runs with it. Obama isn’t “horrified” in the thesis; while she finds that black Princeton alumni identify less with the black community than they did in college, she realizes that doesn’t mean much. “I now believe it is incorrect to assume that just because a Black individual does not enjoy or choose to participate in the culture of his people, that that individual is not interested in benefiting that group of people,” she writes just after the line quoted. “The inability to identify with one aspect of the Black culture does not necessarily cause apathy towards Blacks in general.”

Michelle Obama does not look into a crowd of Obama supporters and see Americans. She sees black people and white people eternally conflicted with one another. The thesis provides a trove of Mrs. Obama’s thoughts and world view seen through a race-based prism. This is a very divisive view for a potential first lady that would do untold damage to race relations in this country in a Barack Obama administration.

Michelle Obama’s intellectually refined racism should give all Americans pause for deep concern. Now maybe she’s changed, but she sure sounds like someone with an axe to grind with America. Will the press let Michelle get a free pass over her obviously racist comment about American whites? I am sure that it will.

Up to the very end, the author wants you to believe that the thesis — which has been misrepresented throughout the e-mail — proves something conclusive about Obama’s worldview now. Never mind what the thesis actually says; the author’s cards are on the table, and they’re of the race variety. Under the guise of sounding concerned about Obama’s anti-white racism, the e-mail plays on racism of a more conventional kind.

The final paragraph hits the trifecta: Not only is Obama an intellectual (and so automatically suspect), she’s also a racist and anti-American. As the Democratic convention begins next week, no wonder you’ll see a heavy emphasis on both Obamas’ backgrounds and life stories (and a prime time speech by Michelle on the opening night). For the potentially millions of people who’ve read this e-mail or one like it, it’ll be their first chance to meet Michelle Obama, someone they may believe they already know.

The other e-mail goes after Barack Obama directly instead of his wife, but to get there, it smears all American Muslims first (after all, the author says, Obama’s a Muslim, too). It’s less based on truth than the Michelle Obama e-mail, and part of it seems to be clipped from an earlier more generic anti-Muslim message:

CAN MUSLIMS BE GOOD AMERICANS?

This is very interesting and we all need to read it From start to Finish and send it on to anyone who will read It. Maybe this is why our American Muslims are so quiet and Not speaking out about any atrocities. Can a good Muslim be A good American? This question was forwarded to a friend who worked in Saudi Arabia for 20 years. The following is his reply:

The first section of this e-mail appears to come from an anti-Muslim message that did not single out Obama as a target. Snopes has a debate on some of this message dating back to August 2006, months before Obama entered the presidential race. Resourcefully, someone seems to have just grafted a few lines of anti-Obama commentary onto some anti-Muslim screed and sent it back out onto the Internet.

The first tipoff that something’s wrong with the e-mail’s facts is the idea that American Muslims are “so quiet” and “not speaking out about any atrocities.” Plenty of American Muslims did just that. The basic question the e-mail poses, “Can a good Muslim be a good American?” is blatantly racist, and the author’s “friend who worked in Saudi Arabia for 20 years” is a questionable authority to rely on (if he exists).

Theologically — no … Because his allegiance is To Allah, The moon God of Arabia

Religiously — no … Because no other religion is Accepted by His Allah except Islam (Quran, 2:256) (Koran)

Scripturally — no … Because his allegiance is to The five Pillars of Islam and the Quran.

These first three lines essentially disqualify Muslims from being “good Americans” because they’re Muslims. It’s true, Muslims worship Allah, accept Islam and have a scriptural allegiance to the Quran and the five pillars of their religion. But besides the fact that a theological test for “American-ness” would be unconstitutional, the author gets some basic facts wrong.

There are some fundamentalist Christians who have decided that Allah is actually a pagan moon god who was worshiped on the Arabian peninsula before the rise of Islam. But Muslims (and most scholars) believe Allah is the same God that Jews and Christians worship — the word means “God” in Arabic. And mainstream Islam considers Christians and Jews to be fellow “People of the Book.” Their religions are acceptable, being monotheistic, though Muslims believe Mohammed was God’s last and greatest prophet.

Geographically — no … Because his allegiance is to Mecca, to which he turns in prayer five times a day.

This is true — devout Muslims pray five times a day, facing Mecca — but irrelevant to the question of loyalty. How do you show geographic loyalty to the United States? What does geographic loyalty even mean? Nothing, but the line sounds authoritative.

Socially — no … Because his allegiance to Islam forbids him to make friends with Christians or Jews.

This isn’t true. There are lines in the Quran warning Muslims not to be allies with Christians or Jews, but others also say Muslims should treat non-Muslims equitably and kindly, as long as they aren’t actively fighting against Islam.

Politically — no … Because he must submit to the Mullahs (spiritual leaders), who teach annihilation of Israel and destruction of America, the great Satan.

Yes, many radical clerics do preach the destruction of Israel and America. And some of them are mullahs (though that’s a title usually used only with Shiite Muslim clerics, who are pretty rare in Saudi Arabia). But just as not all Christians are obliged to listen to the rantings of John Hagee, Muslims aren’t obligated to listen to radical clerics.

Domestically — no … Because he is instructed to marry four women and beat and scourge his wife when she disobeys him (Quran 4:34)

The Quran does allow men to marry four wives, as Mohammed did. But the verse the author cites specifically says that’s only OK if men are sure they can “do justice” to all four. (There are some lines elsewhere that appear to suggest beating wives if they don’t obey their husbands, but there are also lines in the Bible that mandate animal sacrifice and the murder of adulterous women.)

Intellectually — no … Because he cannot accept the American Constitution since it is based on Biblical Principles and he believes the Bible to be corrupt.

Philosophically — no … Because Islam, Muhammad, And the Quran does not allow freedom of religion and expression. Democracy and Islam cannot co-exist. Every Muslim government is either dictatorial or autocratic.

The Constitution isn’t explicitly based on the Bible. The author may be under the sway of Christian scholars who want to reinvent America’s Founding Fathers, many of whom were Deists, as Christian fundamentalists. There’s also no reason that Muslims can’t intellectually understand its principles. Islam does allow freedom of religion (if you’re monotheistic), and Turkey — a Muslim nation — is a democracy. As is India, home to more than 150 million Muslims.

Spiritually — no … Because when we declare “one nation under God,” the Christian’s God is loving and kind, while Allah is NEVER referred to as Heavenly father, nor is he ever called love in The Quran’s 99 excellent names.

This isn’t true. One of Allah’s names for himself is “the loving.” The phrasing here would also seem to mean that only Christians can be “good Americans.”

Therefore, after much study and deliberation …

Perhaps we should be very suspicious of ALL MUSLIMS In this country. — They obviously cannot be both “good” Muslims and good Americans.

Call it what you wish it’s still the truth. You Had better believe it. The more who understand this, the Better it will be for our country and our future. The Religious war is bigger than we know or understand …

And Barack Hussein Obama, a Muslim, wants to be our President? You have GOT to be kidding! Wake up America!

With a few simple ellipses, an error-filled e-mail playing on fear about Muslims becomes an error-filled e-mail playing on fear about Barack Obama. After everything you’ve just read about the nefarious Muslims, why would you vote for one?

Of course, Obama isn’t a Muslim. Obama’s father and stepfather were Muslim, and plenty of Muslims share his Arabic-sounding middle name. But Obama wasn’t raised as part of any religion — he attended a Catholic school, as well as a public school, while growing up in largely Muslim Indonesia. His mother’s family were Christians, and Obama belonged to a United Church of Christ congregation in Chicago for years. (Perhaps you’ve heard something about it?)

Obama even says if he wins the election, he will be sworn in on the Quran — not a Bible!

Footnote: He was sworn in on the Quran for his current office and he refuses to pledge allegiance to the United States or put his hand over his heart when the National Anthem is played!

Again, not true. The author has managed to compress most of the better-known anti-Obama smears into one e-mail, with a footnote for a veneer of scholarship. Obama was sworn into “his current office” (the U.S. Senate) on a Bible, and he’s certain to be sworn in as president the same way if he wins.

The national anthem and Pledge of Allegiance line has been kicking around in other erroneous e-mails for months. Obama was even asked about it at a Pennsylvania debate against Hillary Clinton in April. It’s based on a photo of Obama without his hand over his heart during the national anthem at an Iowa campaign event. Obama says his grandfather, a World War II veteran, taught him to put his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance but to sing during the anthem, and besides, his campaign has provided other images of Obama saluting the flag during the anthem.

The Muslims have said they will destroy us from within. Hello! Having a Muslim president would seem to fit the bill! Will you trust this man with our national secrets?

SO FREEDOM IS NOT FREE.

THE MARINES WANT THIS TO ROLL ALL OVER THE U.S.

Please don’t delete this until you send it on.

Many people have sent it on.

So Wallace, following a 92nd Street Y panel last night, said this:

“There will be pressure to elevate a woman but there will be an equal amount of pressure to pick someone who is prepared,” Wallace said.

And then she said this:

Wallace flagged one female official in particular who she thinks would be a good choice this year.

“Nikki Haley — she’s great,” she said. “She’s the most effective surrogate Romney has.”

If the Sarah Palin problem was a problem of preparation and vetting, Haley … might present some issues? Specifically an odd and mostly unsubstantiated sex scandal and also these rumors that she might at any moment be indicted on tax charges. The tax thing might be bullshit and the affair story was the product of a self-promoting creep but they’re “out there,” as they say.

More important, Haley has been governor of South Carolina since January of 2011. As in very slightly longer than one year. And slightly less time being a governor than Sarah Palin had in 2008. It’s almost as if Wallace is making a pick not based on the principle of Who Would Be Best For the Nation but on demographics and optics?

Wallace also apparently suggested Carly Fiorina, which, lol. Romney/Ex-CEO who famously received a giant golden parachute when she was forced out of her company 2012, everyone! Just the ticket for the new economy.

That is sort of a shame. The Palin thing is the most heavily over-covered story line of the entire 2008 campaign, so focusing on it might be totally logical from a marketing perspective, but it’s unfortunate from an artistic one. The film re-creates various moments of YouTube campaign ephemera very well — remember when that old white lady called Obama an Arab and McCain looked uncomfortable? When it takes us behind closed doors, it’s to witness scenes any moderately close observer of the election and its aftermath could’ve dreamed up him- or herself. It might have been fun to see a TV movie about the Democratic primary fight; the personality clashes of the disastrous Clinton campaign would have made for entertaining television, and Mark Penn is surely a creature crying out for a grotesque Emmy-winning portrayal by, say, Paul Giamatti.

Instead, McCain has won the nomination three-and-a-half minutes into the film. Soon we’re watching Julianne Moore watch Tina Fey on TV. You remember the “SNL” sketches making fun of Palin, right? In case you don’t, “Game Change” airs lengthy chunks from most of them. It also has tons of actual footage from CNN and MSNBC and Fox News, and it re-creates debates and speeches and the Couric interview and the Charlie Gibson interview and a bunch of other things you saw either live or on YouTube when they happened.

Moore’s performance is not just fair but maybe even flattering. (For one thing, she doesn’t hit those flat upper Midwest vowels as gratingly as the real Palin.) Woody Harrelson plays strategist Steve Schmidt — the film’s protagonist — as a grizzled, “too old for this shit” campaign veteran called back to the trail against his better judgment. Jamey Sheridan is given barely anything to do as Mark Salter, McCain’s “conscience.” Salter, the primary author of his “Maverick” mythos, is limited, after the Palin selection, to making a hilariously over-telegraphed face of concern as everyone else in the war room applauds her first speech.

But the film is about Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace because they were pretty clearly Halperin and Heilemann’s primary sources, and we watch them become horrified by the depths of Sarah Palin’s ignorance at exactly the same time as everyone else in America became horrified by her ignorance.

Because it’s Hollywood, there’s very little politics in the film’s depiction of politics. Policies are simply things for Sarah Palin to write on note cards and not memorize. Operatives confidently declare, in faux Sorkin-ese patter, that if this or that meaningless decision is made, it means “we’ll lose by five.”

There is a sheen of faux cynicism (McCain swears like a sailor!) but it masks complete naiveté: Everyone is basically honorable and decent. Nicolle Wallace — a member of the Bush administration communications team — is sincerely alarmed at the prospect of someone as dangerously ignorant as Sarah Palin in the White House. On election night, she breaks down in tears as she admits to Schmidt that … she didn’t vote. They embrace.

The film subscribes to the simplest theory of Sarah Palin: That she is childlike, vain and incredibly ignorant but also an essentially decent person and wonderful mother. The moments that come closest to “unfair” — Sarah Palin doesn’t know that the head of Great Britain’s government is the prime minister, not the queen — are basically plausible. This isn’t Andrew Sullivan’s conniving, dangerous pathological liar. It’s an overwhelmed working mother whose most unhinged moments are explained by a crash diet. Her convention speech is largely stripped of its snarling attack lines, imagining a world in which it appealed to “the base” because of Palin’s heartfelt commitment to special-needs children and not because she was very good at saying mean things about Obama. (The film actually repeats the bullshit story that her teleprompter broke midway through, and she kept going.) Even when the film has her take a major heel turn — “if I am single-handedly carrying this campaign, I am gonna do what I want!” — after “winning” her debate with Joe Biden (played by video footage of Joe Biden), she is still basically an innocent seduced by the adoration of riled-up crowds and national attention. (Todd Palin barely does anything.)

The constant use of actual news footage adds a bit of verisimilitude but also constantly raises the question of why this lightly fictionalized version of the election actually needs to exist. “Game Change” is not really for serious political junkies, who remember all the stuff that did happen and will scoff at the stuff that didn’t. (At one point, John McCain answers his ringing iPhone in the middle of the night. He used a BlackBerry, HBO.) But if casually politically involved people want to see their assumptions about Sarah Palin reinforced, well, there are still those “SNL” sketches.

In the end, the Republican operatives who foisted Sarah Palin on an unprepared nation are rightly horrified that they created a monster, but at no point does anyone act concerned that their actual candidate was himself an angry, warmongering old crank with extremely fungible principles. Sure, Sarah Palin didn’t know what the Fed did. Do we have any proof John McCain knew what it should’ve done? Maybe everyone actually was totally unfair to poor Sarah Palin.

Rice, the national security advisor in George W. Bush’s first presidential term and secretary of state in his second, is currently a professor at Stanford with the requisite right-wing think tank fellowship. She has not said or done anything “political” in years. But Curl has been hearing things!

America’s first black female secretary of state is quietly positioning herself to be the top choice of the eventual Republican presidential nominee, ready to deliver bona fide foreign-policy credentials lacking among the candidates. The 56-year-old has recently raised her profile, releasing her memoir in November and embarking on a monthlong book tour.

After 2 1/2 years as a professor at Stanford, Miss Rice is reportedly getting “antsy” to get back into the political game. “She’s ready to go,” said one top source.

Oh, a month-long tour in support of her book about her time in the Bush administration! She must be running for vice president, along with Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and Scott McClellan and George W. Bush.

There’s more. (And not just the part where Curl calls Rice “a spicy Rice dish” and waxes fetishistic about “her guns” being “a match for those of our first lady Michelle Obama.”)

Plus, her selection would be a giant chess move to counter the expected replacement of Vice President Joseph R. Biden with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Sure, the White House denies and denies, but that should really make any political watcher more suspicious. One White House insider even told me that the position swap was the only reason Mrs. Clinton joined the administration in the first place.

Curl has so many inside scoops packed into this column! I had no idea that our first presidential running mate swap since Ford’s 1976 campaign was basically a foregone conclusion and not just a weird Beltway journalist fantasy! But yes, I can see why the still  un-chosen GOP candidate would definitely be looking pretty closely at Rice — who’s been strongly making the case for her selection by not explicitly denying interest in the position — in case Obama replaces Biden with Clinton, which he will surely do.

The column gets worse (“Funny thing is, she is, unlike Barack Obama, an ‘American black’”) but that’s not really important. What’s important is exploring how someone like Condoleezza Rice ends up a perennial name on the fantasy ticket list.

Rice has been a subject of these columns since 2005, when she became Bush’s second secretary of state, and the White House tasked communications operative Jim Wilkinson — previously known best for inventing the false story of Jessica Lynch* — with getting Rice (and her boss) some much-needed positive press. Wilkinson did his job beautifully (remember when Rice’s knee-high boots were a topic of actual serious news coverage for weeks?) and Rice began receiving the “rock star” treatment.

In the Washington Post, Glenn Kessler, author of the 2007 Rice bio “The Confidante,” summarized the exact moment of the birth of the presidential speculation:

In March 2005, before Rice sat for an interview with the Washington Times, Wilkinson slipped a note to the editorial page editor, Tony Blankley, suggesting that she be asked whether she would consider running for president. It was an audacious proposal — she had been secretary for only six weeks — but such speculation would bolster Rice’s image as a leader. (Wilkinson and Blankley said they do not recall the incident, but others present said they saw Wilkinson’s note.)

Oh, the Washington Times.

Shortly thereafter, Dick Morris wrote a book claiming — nay, insisting — that 2008 would be “Condi vs. Hillary.”

As Iraq descended into a violent civil war in 2006, Rice-for-president buzz bizarrely grew. There was enough of a false grass-roots movement for a paint-by-numbers AP trend piece with a silly nickname and everything. Tim Russert asked her point blank. As always, she said no in no uncertain terms.

Then, of course, everyone began to speculate that she’d be McCain’s running mate. Robert Novak claimed as much on Fox. Dan Senor said she was pushing for the pick on some Sunday show. Hendrik Hertzberg wrote a Talk of the Town piece on the subject! McCain and Rice both finally denied “reports” that she was angling for the spot on the ticket.

Now, I guess, it’s time to start up the rumor mill anew.

But before you put pen to paper on that column about how a Gingrich-Rice ticket would surely win moderate women in Ohio, consider this: In addition to the fact that she’s always denied wanting the job, and in addition to the fact that she was an unmitigated failure in the Bush administration, downplaying terrorism as a priority prior to 9/11 and selling the public on the Iraq invasion with untruths, Condi Rice is pro-choice.

*Update: Jon Krakauer recently rescinded his claim that Wilkinson, then a communications aide to General Tommy Franks, was responsible for the initial false Washington Post report on Lynch’s apparent heroics before her capture. Though Wilkinson was obviously involved in the PR campaign surrounding Lynch’s rescue and return to the U.S., he apparently isn’t responsible for falsifying her actions or leaking that false story to the press.

The New Black Panther Party is a cartoonish fringe group of a couple guys who play “’60s radical” dress-up and say mean things about whitey for Fox cameras in order to scare old white people. They have been explicitly rejected by the old Black Panther Party. For some reason, various conservatives have dedicated themselves to proving that this weird, marginal group of Nation of Islam cast-offs is somehow supported by or deeply connected to the Democratic Party and the Obama administration in particular, because, you know, Eric Holder and Barack Obama, those are two guys who very obviously share the values of extremist anti-white proponents of racial separation.

So Breitbart “proves” something or other about the essential anti-white racistness of the Obama campaign by noting that members of the inane New Black Panther Party were spotted by cameras near Obama, at various times, and also NBPP head Malik Zulu Shabazz spoke at the event.

(Brietbart goes on to publish two pictures of the event despite the photographer withholding permission, because “The First Amendment allows photographs of such enormous public importance to see the light of day.” Good luck with that argument in court?)

Andrew C. McCarthy gleefully endorses Breitbart’s story in a breathless post at the National Review’s The Corner:

This is a shocking story, and a breathtaking indictment of the mainstream media which went out of its way to avoid vetting Obama as a candidate — and to make sure anyone who tried to do due diligence got no sunshine. A candidate who chose to appeared in the company of, say, the KKK, would have provoked relentlessly hostile media coverage and, in short order, have been marginalized as disqualified to hold responsible elective office.

If only the media had reported that some fringe weirdos also participated in this event that both Democratic candidates and thousands of other people participated in, and then the fringe weirdos sort of followed Obama around for a while. That would’ve opened America’s eyes! (I mean the media besides NPR, which did report that the NBPP was there.)

Here’s the bit of this sad, desperate reach that is the saddest and most desperate: “Andrew further reminds us that, in March 2008, the Obama campaign website posted an endorsement of Obama by the New Black Panther Party.” Whoa, did they really? Shocking if true! It is, of course, not true. It was a user-generated blog post on the Obama campaign site that the campaign removed as soon as they became aware of its existence. Because websites do not “post” things to themselves, generally, McCarthy’s statement can’t even be charitably described as technically accurate. It’s just a lie.

A random stupid incorrect Breitbart smear is worth paying attention to only to the extent that the smear threatens to bubble up to the more reputable conservative press, or Fox, or Republican elected officials. The McCarthy endorsement means keep an eye on this one!

Here’s my reaction to those revelations: Sarah Palin is a person! She’s done drugs and pissed people off and slept with people, like 90 percent of American humans. If Sarah Palin was smart she’d dismiss the book with a chuckle, say nobody’s perfect, laugh off the “gossip,” and move on.

Sarah Palin might not be smart.

The Palins always prefer grand self-pitying martyrdom to quiet dignity, of course, which is why picking on them can be so profitable: They will always respond, and always help you drum up more publicity for your Palin-attacking venture. Instead of depriving the book of oxygen, they launched a multimedia attack on Joe McGinniss before he’d finished the first draft, and what they accomplished was … giving him more material and ensuring that even more breathless anticipation awaited the book’s release.

Now that the book’s rollout is underway, the Palins might as well get paid for their marketing efforts. Todd Palin angrily denounced it, again accusing McGinniss of having a “creepy obsession” with Sarah Palin. Oooh, it’s so creeeepy to write an unauthorized biography of a prominent public figure, right?

How bad did the Palins allowed themselves to be trolled? Sarah Palin’s people released a statement on behalf of Brad Hanson, Todd Palin’s former business partner, with whom Sarah Palin is alleged to have carried on an extramarital affair, some years back. The statement is a blanket denial, but what does having the supposed beau directly address the press accomplish, exactly? It just drives more interest in the book’s salacious, shocking revelations about the secret life of Sarah Palin. This guy, of all guys, should be kept out of it.

I am sure that Todd and everyone else is very personally pissed off that McGinniss went to Wasilla, talked to a bunch of people who hate them, and published a book full of stories about how bad and awful they are, but blowing up publicly just sends the message that there’s stuff in the book worth getting worked up about.