Obama Campaign Site: “Throw the Jews in the Oven”
by Bill Levinson
The Obama campaign’s moderators admittedly threw this one under the bus, but only after Aaron Klein cited it in “Obama site: Jews must be ‘burned’: Anti-Semites congregate on candidate’s official presidential campaign blog.”
- the only way to free america
By Al from Tucson, AZ - Aug 4th, 2008 at 1:53 pm EDT
is to shed ourselves from the racist zionists in america. they control everything. but they won’t keep us down any longer. throw the jews in the oven this november. its the only way we can free america and make sure barack obama is elected!
…they control everything…
But they obviously don’t control wackos like Al from Tucson. No sirree! Wackos are really difficult to control…
Comment by keelie — August 9, 2008 @ 2:42 pm
Let’s look at this objectively, shall we?
Although I would advise against it, the “blog” section of Obama’s site has open signup and passive moderation policies. It is probably because they don’t hire a team of people to monitor the site on a 24/7 basis — which is what you would need for a site that gets roughly five million hits a day and thousands of people posting comments and commentary.
Instead, they rely on “the community” to report objectionable content and for the most part it works. But even if someone were to monitor the site 24/7 there is going to be stuff that gets past.
Case in point is THIS site. As much as Ted and some of the rest of you keep an eagle eye on this site, you still miss a LOT of stuff and you might happen upon it a month or two later by accident. I have been monitoring this site for about three years now (not so much until lately due to health issues) and I am constantly finding “gems” that have been posted deep in the comments of the archives. In fact, last week it was brought to my attention that there was a problem accessing the archives from 2006. When I looked, I found over fifty redirects to porn sites, pharma sites and even one Islamic site.
Stuff happens.
If you were going to embarrass a candidate like Obama, one way you could (or would) do it would be to post an objectionable comment or entry in the campaign blog section. Maybe several of them. Maybe you would include inflammatory statements that NO candidate would ever endorse (unless that candidate were David Duke). Then, in a moment of “gotcha” politics, it is brought to the attention of a rag like World Net Daily whose sole existence is based on the “gotcha” politic model.
The fact of the matter is, once it was brought to the attention of the site moderators, the objectionable content was deleted — just as I unceremoniously deleted objectionable stuff from THIS site. I didn’t go out and post a comment somewhere saying that Israpundit supports teen boy sex, or endorses Islamic websites.
Testing the new AJAX comment editing feature.
Yup. It works!
Comment by DJ Allyn, Technical Advisor — August 9, 2008 @ 2:55 pm
And you have no idea how long it took the moderators to remove the crap that Aaron Klein wrote about. From what I can see, Klein posted his article on WND on August 5th at 9:03PM, and as you posted above the following appeared on Obama’s site at:
It was taken down much faster than the “36 hours” that you have “established”.
Crap gets by all the time — I know, I see enough of it not only here, but at the roughly sixty other websites that I do work on.
to get rid of that one, which was directed at AIPAC, vs. 36 hours for the quotes from “Dreams From My Father.” This says a lot about their priorities.
Sorry, but in testing my new editing plugin, I modified my earlier comment.
You are assuming that only ONE person would get it in his mind to embarrass Obama. I never said that. There are probably thousands who have thought of it — I certainly did right here with no real effort of imagination. In fact, open formats like what is being used at the Obama site almost begs for someone to come and abuse it. You just admitted to it yourself.
That said, it is still easy to overlook the bad crap that gets posted — especially the OLDER stuff because it is no longer on anyone’s radar.
Also, just because something is purported to be posted August 9, 2008 @ 3:00 pm, doesn’t necessarily mean that was when it really was posted. Otherwise you would have to wonder how I was able to post this comment before you posted yours. (it really didn’t take that much of a trick to do — and I did it without having to edit anything — I just know where the exploits are)
===edited below ===
Yes it can. But just the fact that you say that means that ANYTHING is possible. But the objective person would have to insert some common sense.
You are making it sound as though the Obama camp condones these views, or embraces them, and that would be an absurd conclusion. NOBODY running for President is EVER going to publicly and deliberately allow this line of thinking to go through. It just isn’t going to happen.
Maybe the Obama camp needs to shut down the open-format blog, or hire a trainload of moderators to individually approve each and every post or comment.
Oh, and I will give you a hint: I didn’t use WordPress to post a comment here. There are some blog posting platforms out there that allow you to date your entries and post to many different sites as long as you have permissions granted to post there.
I am not saying that is what happened at Obama’s site, but it is one that SPAMMERS use to hide their spam comments in everyone’s blogs.
Comment by DJ Allyn, Technical Advisor — August 9, 2008 @ 3:00 pm
DJ,
It has been established that the Obama campaign exercises editorial control over this site. As an example, I posted some anti-Obama material (consisting primarily of referenced quotes from “Dreams From My Father” and his wife’s thesis) at My.Barackobama.com. The material was deleted and my account disabled within 36 hours, thus showing how diligent the moderators are in finding and removing obviously hostile (albeit not hate speech) material.
In contrast, Tony Wicher’s material about “Zionist Thought Police” and the “Jewish Lobby” remained there for more than half a year in full view not only of the moderators but also the people who commented on it. In fact, at least one comment on this posting was removed for “offensive” or “disrespectful” content. Emily, the same administrator who disabled my account, put herself on record as counseling another MyBO member to use “Israel Lobby” instead of “Jewish Lobby,” sort of like counseling someone to use “darkies” instead of the N word when talking about Black people. Furthermore, I am on record as reporting actual libel to Obama’s moderators. It took them more than a week to get rid of that one, which was directed at AIPAC, vs. 36 hours for the quotes from “Dreams From My Father.” This says a lot about their priorities.
Re: “It also allows the opposition to come in and post embarrassing little “bombs” that can later be “discovered”. If only one person had posted the kind of material I cite here, I would be inclined to agree with you. I would in fact suspect that an agent provacateur had posted it to make Obama look bad, just as you say. When it’s dozens of people, though, that suggests a pattern of behavior that is sanctioned by the site. Emily’s advice to use “Israel Lobby” instead of “Jewish Lobby” supports that contention, as does Obama’s own association with professional bigots (Sharpton, Wright, Pfleger, MoveOn.org).
Your observation also could easily be turned around. Dozens of postings at MyBO propagate a rumor, whose basis is really no more than John McCain’s age, that McCain has a neurodegenerative disease. How do we know that Obama campaign staffers aren’t encouraging this while posting under assumed names, thus allowing Obama to reap the benefits of those rumors without taking the blame? The operative term is “gray propaganda,” i.e. propaganda that is anonymous. In contrast, “white propaganda” is propaganda from an identifiable source, while “black propaganda” is from a falsely-attributed source. As an example of the latter, the Japanese dropped leaflets on the Philippines that identified themselves as being from the U.S. Army, and they warned American soldiers against getting venereal diseases from Filipino women. Their intention was of course to make Filipinos angry at the U.S. for implying that their women were sexually “loose” and had VD.
In summary, I am quite familiar with all the dirty tricks that people have used for centuries. It would not surprise me if some people were in fact using these dirty tricks on Obama, but he is still responsible for his site’s content–one hater might be an agent provacateur, but dozens if not hundreds? It also would not surprise me if it came out that his staffers were posting anti-McCain and anti-Hillary Clinton hate speech under pseudonyms, so this cuts both ways. As you say, “It is kinda silly for ANY political campaign to allow open signup for blogs on a campaign site. It is even more foolish not to moderate EVERYTHING prior to posting it.”
The argument you present is, incidentally, the same that MoveOn.org tried to excuse the presence of hate speech at its now-disgraced Action Forum. MoveOn argued that enemies posted the material, MoveOn didn’t know about it, anybody could post to the forum, etc. Again, “exercise of editorial control” was proven, along with the fact that MoveOn.org did not even remove more than a small fraction of the hate speech even after it admitted to its discovery. The end result was that MoveOn had to close its Action Forum permanently.
Did you ever read Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game?” It includes two gifted teenagers who use the Internet (which was hardly known at the time) to manipulate public opinion. This is definitely worth discussion, and the same for R.A. Lafferty’s “Thou Whited Wall” on the malleability of public opinion. We are now seeing many of these principles in action all over the Internet.
Comment by Bill Levinson — August 9, 2008 @ 3:04 pm
Re: “It was taken down much faster than the “36 hours” that you have “established”.”
The one about throwing Jews in the ovens was, but apparently not before Aaron Klein posted it at World Net Daily. Someone at the Obama campaign probably saw the WND article and took rapid action to deal with this one. They also reacted to a posting here at IsraPundit, on a Sunday no less, by throwing an equally hateful posting under the bus within FOUR HOURS.
In all cases, though, it looks like the moderation is reactive as opposed to proactive. Only when the hate speech gets quoted on a hostile site does anything seem to get done about it. If Obama’s staff wanted to moderate proactively–and this would deal with both agents provacateur and bigots who really support Obama–it could easily do so. It was easy enough for me to find this stuff with a keyword search, so Obama’s staff also could find it if they really wanted to look for it.
I have some self-education in psychological warfare, and the idea is obvious. It also shows up in Sun Tzu’s Art of War, which was written 2500 years ago. Of course, they didn’t have the Internet back then, but they had all the dirty tricks. In one case, an agent provacateur told the enemy that, if he desecrated graves and mutilated prisoners, he would demoralize the other side. The enemy did these things, which enraged the other side to the extent that it went berserk and slaughtered the offenders. In another case, a spy was sent out with a secret message, and deliberately betrayed to the enemy. The secret message was to an important enemy general, whom the King executed on the spot as a traitor.
On the other hand, noting that Obama’s side also can commit this kind of abuse–and I refer to the McCain rumors as opposed to the anti-Semitic trash–it’s not an excuse. Your advice “Maybe the Obama camp needs to shut down the open-format blog, or hire a trainload of moderators to individually approve each and every post or comment” is 100 percent correct, although MoveOn.org tried the second unsuccessfully in 2006. Their own members disliked the delay that resulted from moderation. Then MoveOn had to do the first, i.e. shut down the open-format blog. The other alternative would be to not moderate at all, which would in fact exonerate Obama from responsibility.
I am aware of this, but I don’t know if it would work at MyBO, Daily Kos, or Free Republic. They seem to have fairly unique platforms. Also, the chronology of comments at Obama’s site suggest that entries are not pre-dated as you describe.
The bottom line is that I and others began to expose this stuff in April, and that is when the Obama campaign began to react by deleting the offending entries. They have been aware of the problem for more than three months. The fact that they have not taken the trouble to search their site for ALL the hate speech speaks very badly of their priorities. This approach (in which one deals only with an immediate symptom as opposed to the root cause) would cause a company to fail an ISO 9000 quality system audit pretty quickly. I know that because I do that kind of work for a living. If I deal only with the immediate symptom, such as defective parts or outdated documents, without finding out WHY the parts were defective or the documents outdated, it shows that I don’t really care that much about quality. If Obama’s site deals with the hate speech only when it is brought to its attention, and only with the cited examples, it shows that the campaign doesn’t care that much about keeping the hate speech off its site.
In summary, I agree with you that Obama should either pre-moderate each entry or shut down the site. The former would probably annoy users (as it did with MoveOn.org’s people), and the latter would probably result in less fundraising. Since the campaign has millions of dollars, though, it could hire full-time people to pre-moderate every blog entry and comment on a real-time basis, if it wanted to do that.
Comment by Bill Levinson — August 9, 2008 @ 4:12 pm
Addendum: we must also ask whether the hate speech at MyBO is consistent or inconsistent with Barack Obama’s actions. Had Obama not belonged to a racist church, not promoted and endorsed Al Sharpton, and “rejected” Farrakhan’s endorsement the instant it was offered, I would have to admit that the hate speech is inconsistent with Obama’s own behavior. Since the facts are exactly the opposite, though, I have to call the hate speech consistent with Obama’s own actions. (”Edit comment” does not work well, at least not in Netscape Communicator 7.1)
Comment by Bill Levinson — August 9, 2008 @ 4:49 pm
So what is the problem? They took those postings down, end of story.
Like I said, they are not dealing with a few hundred hits a day like you are here, they are dealing with five million hits a day and thousands of comments and posts.
Not really all that unique. They all share the basic engine required for this kind of thing. If you have the credential information, you can get in.
Were you expecting them to do something because YOU wanted them to do it? They apparently have a system in place where other readers can police the site and report offending comments and entries. It is probably a lot more effective that way than hiring someone to scour the site on a 24/7/365 basis. But with ANY system, there are crevices and cracks that things drop into. It isn’t as though they were purposely keeping such comments and entries on their website — although that is the assumption you want to jump to, and no matter how much I try to talk you out of that tree, you will continue to sit there. Because that is the conclusion you wish to keep, the narrative you wish to pursue.
I never actually said that — you are putting words into my mouth. I only mentioned how I would handle it. For the vast majority of users on that site, it works just fine for them. Your suggestion of hiring full-time moderators sounds good, but in reality with that kind of volume isn’t 100 percent effective — and I suspect that is the only thing YOU are going to be happy with.
As far as offensive material on that site, the percentage that gets through is really not that much. We don’t know how much stuff is caught immediately, we just assume that it isn’t being watched all that closely. But we are talking about human error and the chance that with best laid plans and such something is going to get through. And it does.
There isn’t much that works well with Netscape. If you don’t like IE or FireFox, you might want to try Opera 9.5.1 or Safari for Windows.
Test Edit Safari
Test Edit Opera
Test Edit FireFox
Test Edit Internet Exploder
Comment by DJ Allyn — August 9, 2008 @ 8:47 pm
Actually, what needs to occur is an escape clause on any site that reads: “We allow freedom of speech on this website, but we personally may not agree with, endorse, advocate, support, defend, or believe what is posted as our own personal views.”
I know that Ted Belman rejects most of my views about Jesus, and although we are agreed in many areas such as: Israel belongs to Israel; Obama just doesn’t work; and American leaders and Israeli leaders have been corrupted; we agree for the most part on general stuff. Now I have made many objectional comments intended with a sense of humor and I would never, in my own personal humor, ever say that Ted supports or accepts my sense of humor or the way I view life. I would not hold Ted responsible for what I personally say or write. You can’t hold websites accountable for what other people say and if people want to say something offensive, let them speak from their own minds and hearts. Go to http://www.beliefnet.com! That is one of the most moderated sites on earth where freedom of speech is not allowed. Every website should have an escape clause. I personally don’t hold Obama responsible for what other people post on his website; I hold Obama accountable for what HE says; what HE does; how HE reacts; what his actions historically have been and what they are today. Although you are not responsible for what your AFFILIATES SAY AND DO, you are personally responsible for yourself.
I am against moderation of anyone’s rights to speak freely - and anyone who loves the God of Israel won’t be offended by people who hate Him because the people who hate God and hate His People, who hate Israel, who hate Jesus, who hate genuine Christians don’t realize that it’s not the Faithful Jews or Christians who are headed for the lake of fire! Also, we can disregard the comments made by DJ Allyn when he blasts away at WorldNetDaily. We can simply disagree with him as someone who doesn’t like World Net Daily, allow him to post his personal opinions, even if we disagree with them, and find some basis for a communication with him - I would agree with a lot of what DJ Allyn said and disagree with a lot of what he said. Should we moderate DJ Allyn because we don’t like his points of view and disagree with him? NO! We aren’t going to solve the worlds problems by avoiding each other, deleting and editing and moderating each other, but choosing to either accept or reject what someone says or does - live and let live - or live and let die! Simple as that!
Comment by Michael Sunstar — August 9, 2008 @ 9:00 pm
I suppose Ted could moderate me here, but I don’t think I say anything that anyone here could possibly find “objectionable”. As I stated in my upgrading thread, I don’t normally comment here at all. I tend to stay out of the normal dialogue on this site and stick to the back end stuff. But I chose to comment here mainly because I can see this from a different perspective than most people do. I see if from the side of running large websites — I host twenty-two high-traffic sites on my own servers and I monitor and work on an additional thirty-something sites of various sizes and formats. It is easy to say that something SHOULD be done some way and on its face it makes a lot of sense.
I don’t wish to enter into the politics of anything — it is counterproductive. I only got involved in this particular thread because I know how hard it is to keep up with a large site and can only imagine a site that gets 5 million hits in one day.
Comment by DJ Allyn, Technical Advisor — August 9, 2008 @ 9:24 pm
Re: “Actually, what needs to occur is an escape clause on any site that reads: “We allow freedom of speech on this website, but we personally may not agree with, endorse, advocate, support, defend, or believe what is posted as our own personal views.””
This is true on unmoderated Internet newsgroups. However, Obama’s site is moderated, which is what makes him responsible for the content. If he had allowed my blog to stand (as well as other material that was deleted for “offensive” or “disrespectful” content) we would not be having this discussion.
DJ Allyn wrote,
“They apparently have a system in place where other readers can police the site and report offending comments and entries. It is probably a lot more effective that way than hiring someone to scour the site on a 24/7/365 basis.”
The fact that I had no trouble finding the hate speech suggests otherwise. I do not have your computer skills, but it was pretty easy. If they hired four or five people to police the site 24/7, they would not have a problem. Since they have chosen to exercise editorial control, they ought to do that.
Comment by Bill Levinson — August 10, 2008 @ 12:50 am
It doesn’t in the least. And there is a disclaimer posted on the site:
Pretty clear to me.
Comment by DJ Allyn, Technical Advisor — August 10, 2008 @ 1:45 am
DJ,
I know what the Obama site says, and Obama’s staff violated its own terms of service when it deleted my material (which was not “unlawful, threatening, libelous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, graphic”). This is in fact my own policy at husaria.wordpress.com–unless a comment is spam, totally unrelated to the posting (e.g. “Come see my Web site”), or a physical threat, I’ll approve it even if it is critical of me, and even if it contains hate speech. In the latter case, though, I’ll usually post a reply to the effect that the hate speech reflects on the individual who posted it.
But wait–they add, “or otherwise objectionable,” which of course includes criticism of Obama. At that point, they assert the right to make value judgments about what can and cannot appear on their site, which makes them responsible for everything on the site.
I suggest that you look up “Stratton Oakmont Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co.” in which a judge ruled that a libel suit could proceed against Prodigy because of a user-generated libelous entry on one of its discussion boards. I’d post a link, but I think this site holds up as potential spam comments that contain links. A Google search on “Prodigy” and “exercise of editorial control” will, however, bring up plenty. The judge’s position was that, because Prodigy reserved the right to control the discussion boards, and in fact did so, it was responsible for any libelous material it allowed to stand. I think the judge added that the fact that the control was incomplete (as it is at Obama’s site) did not relieve Prodigy of the responsibility it assumed once it began to exercise editorial control.
Congress passed a law in response to make it more difficult to sue a service provider or discussion board owner, but the logic is reasonable. If I run a discussion board and start to delete content with which I disagree, but allow to stand a piece of hate speech or libel, someone could easily contend that I saw the hate speech or libel and chose to look the other way. If I argue that an enemy posted the hate speech to make me look bad, and we agree that there are doubtlessly people who do that sort of thing, someone could argue that I posted it myself under an anonymous name. As an example, someone posted to Obama’s site a piece that called Obama the N word. Was this an obvious Internet troll, or was it an Obama supporter who wanted to (by implication) smear Obama’s opponents as racists?
The way to avoid questions of this nature, which can never be answered to anyone’s satisfaction, is either to (1) exercise no editorial control whatsoever except for physical threats, spam, and so on that are never acceptable anywhere on the Internet, or (2) make darned sure that ALL the hate speech stays off one’s site.
Addendum: here is part of the judge’s reasoning in the Prodigy case.
(Edit Comments does work properly in Firefox)
Comment by Bill Levinson — August 10, 2008 @ 12:11 pm
Sounds as though you are being an apologist for obama. It’s interesting that they removed the offending post so soon after it was featured on WND and also a couple of weeks ago another offending post was removed from mybarackobama hours after it was posted here by Bill Levinson. It is obvious that the Obama campaign is taking the time to closely monitor sites critical of obama. Yet no such close monitoring is given to Obama’s own website where anti-Semitic bile runs rampant. Perhaps such ugly material wouldn’t fall through the cracks if Obama’s campaign were paying as much attention to his own website as they are of critics.
Incidentally, neither Hillary’s or McCain’s websites have had a problem with hate speech on their sites. The question should be why does he attract these people in hordes? I agree with Bill that the Obama campaign is responsible for content on its site.
Comment by Laura — August 10, 2008 @ 12:18 pm
What is that saying: “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”?
I am guessing that whatever it was you posted caused someone else to report it as inappropriate. I don’t know — I wasn’t there. But frankly, the owners/operators of ANY site have the final say over what stays and what goes, so even if YOU didn’t think your blog entry was worthy of being removed, apparently, THEY felt otherwise.
Still, some things do slip past. Take a good look at Craigslist. There is a lot of stuff that gets posted on Craigslist that is inappropriate and/or offensive. Most often that stuff is flagged and removed. Other times it slides through either because it didn’t get enough flags or there was a disconnect between the number of flags and the moderator being notified. I am sure the issue is probably the same on the MyBO site. It probably takes a certain number of people to hit the “report abuse” link before it triggers an email to the moderator.
You probably have this vision of the MyBO website being operated by a team of 30 or 40 people working around the clock to keep things up and running. The reality is, it is probably one person working an 8-hour shift that has not only the MyBO account but fifty other sites as well. Maybe he or she has a backup person and they share accounts.
And that is a bad thing? Who and what are YOU an “apologist” for? As I stated above, I don’t normally post comments here except on something that I have more than a passing experience in — and designing, operating, hosting, and monitoring websites is something that I have more than a passing knowledge of. I don’t work on Obama’s site, but I am pretty familiar with how such things are done.
You find it “interesting”? Would you have found it even MORE interesting if they had just left it up there after it was brought to their attention? Which one would be more damning for you: immediately removing bad content as soon as it was brought to their attention, or not removing it when it was brought to their attention?
I am guessing that because you are looking for ANY reason to be critical of Obama that BOTH scenarios would be worthy of criticizing Obama over.
And yes, from Bill’s own story, it took only 36 hours to remove his blog entries. But it took less than 24 to remove at least one of the entries pointed out by WND.
You are dealing with human beings who have other things to do besides just monitor a large website. You only see the one little thing and assume that is all they have to do.
For the most part, the READERS of the site are the first line of defense against bad content. If they see something, they can click a link and it files a report with whoever has the task of moderating the site. It is pretty common in these kinds of forums.
I can even put one of those links here on this site, and anytime someone finds something offensive, Ted would be notified. (don’t want it sent to me, I have enough things to deal with on different websites than to be responsible for content.)
Rampant? You are telling me that the totality of the content on Obama’s site is anti-Semitic bile? Or are you confusing a handful of crap that makes it through for a short period of time being representative of the entire content of the site?
Neither of them had an open forum blogging system either. Site content was controlled wholly by the person operating the site.
Don’t be naive. The people posting that stuff aren’t there to support Obama, they are there to embarrass him. Apparently there are gullible people like you that it is working on.
I think that this would be a great topic for a show this week. I think I will contact the communications director for the Obama campaign and see if she can come on the show.
Comment by DJ Allyn, Technical Advisor — August 10, 2008 @ 1:16 pm
Re:
What I posted was obviously hostile to Obama. It included embarrassing material from “Dreams From My Father,” with page numbers (unlike the urban legends), material from his wife’s thesis (again with page numbers, unlike the urban legends), and Obama’s open association with racists and anti-Semites like Al Sharpton. I think the latter cited a Wall Street Journal opinion piece on Sharpton’s history, e.g. Tawana Brawley and Freddy’s Fashion Mart. Needless to say, Obama’s people had every right in the world to delete it but, by doing so, they assumed an obligation to deal with the hate speech.
If so, they have a REAL problem. As I mentioned, I reported material that is probably legally libelous. I posted a screen shot of the report here and elsewhere. The libel of AIPAC, aka “the Israel Lobby” (a term approved by an Obama campaign staffer, the same one who disabled my account) remained online for no less than a week, versus 36 hours for my material. This says a lot about their priorities.
Doing the right thing only after one gets caught and exposed for doing the wrong thing carries very little credit. It took them only four hours–on a Sunday no less–to delete another piece of hate speech that I posted here. This suggests that they do indeed have people who work 24/7 to monitor IsraPundit, WND, Free Republic, and so on for damaging content, but the same administrators can’t be bothered to search their own Web site to find the hate speech before it gets quoted on hostile sites.
We have no argument over the fact that they will in fact delete the hate speech once someone rubs their noses in it, but that is hardly complimentary to them.
MyBO’s apparent tolerance of hate speech–at least until it shows up here or WND in a hostile context–is consistent as opposed to inconsistent with Obama’s own association with racists, anti-Semites, and other bigots. If I were painting a picture, the hate speech from MyBO would blend right in with Obama’s own appearance with Al Sharpton (racist and anti-Semite), his membership in Jeremiah Wright’s church plus the anti-Israel and anti-US hate in the church’s official bulletin, his acceptance of Wright’s and Michael Pfleger’s endorsements, and his reluctance to “reject” Louis Farrakhan’s endorsement.
Did you know that Barackobama.com–and we are talking about the part run by his campaign staffers, not the user-generated content at MyBO–hosted endorsements from both Wright and Pfleger? Only when Wright and Pfleger became embarrassments were these endorsements thrown under the bus. In other words, we have a very consistent pattern of behavior. Obama will personally associate with and accept endorsements from bigots until he is backed into a corner, which is what Tim Russert and Hillary Clinton did over the Farrakhan endorsement. Then the individual in question gets tossed under the bus. Hate speech at MyBO is allowed to stand until it is quoted here and/or at WND, Atlas Shrugs, LGF, Free Republic, and so on, and only then does it get tossed under the bus.
In other words, the Obama campaign will admittedly react to each individual piece of hate speech, but it will not do anything proactive to deal with the hate speech when it appears. From a quality management standpoint, this is like accepting returns from irate customers while doing nothing to fix the underlying quality problems that cause the defects in the first place. The company’s position is that it will continue to make junk, and act only when someone complains. MyBO’s position is apparently that it will act on hate speech that someone explicitly brings to its attention–perhaps the hard way as I have described–but will not take any action to prevent it. This does not speak very highly of the official campaign.
Let me know when, and I will be delighted to appear too. (I assume it’s a radio show.) I never say behind someone’s back what I will not say to their face, and with my real name and reputation behind it. Before Obama’s communication director makes a decision, though, she should be aware that an identical scandal forced MoveOn.org to disable its prized Action Forum in 2006. MoveOn tried many of the same arguments: it didn’t see the hate speech until August 2006, Republican operatives planted it to make them look bad, it can’t control what outsiders put on its forum, and so on. These were obviously not successful, and MoveOn had to cut its prized Action Forum loose.
Meanwhile, I thought that a search on Emily, the Obama for America administrator who disabled my account, would be very instructive. Here is a posting from an unhappy FORMER Obama supporter that shows where the moderators’ priorities lie. Emily was very diligent in finding Tom’s posting, in which he expressed dissatisfaction with Obama’s stance on a piece of legislation. Now, if an administrator can find something like this, she ought to be able to find something that contains keywords like n****r, honky, Jewish lobby, kikes, b***h (applied copiously to Hillary Clinton) and so on if she really wanted to do so–and all of these words and phrases have indeed shown up at MyBO.
This, and not material like “kike filth are trying to steal the election,” is an example of what the Obama campaign means by “offensive and disrespectful content.”
Speaking of which, the Obama campaign deleted the page in which someone quoted Emily’s directive to say “Israel Lobby” instead of “Jewish Lobby” (Google on “Emily” and “Israel lobby” for site:barackobama.com)–again, an obvious reaction to IsraPundit and similar sites where we re-posted it. In other words, the Obama campaign felt it had to censor a quote from one of its own administrators. Here it is, for the record:
In fact, it might be instructive to search for the names of other administrators to see what kind of warnings they have handed out to MyBO participants, and for what “offenses.” One was for using the F word, which is understandable, but I have yet to find one for hate speech…
Comment by Bill Levinson — August 10, 2008 @ 2:51 pm
Which probably prompted several READERS to click the handy link to have it removed.
They aren’t legally responsible unless they continued to keep it up there and AIPAC complained. Even so, they’ve stated from the start that they do not endorse the views of people who post in the blog section of the website.
And they DID take it down.
Oh what’s the point? Like I pointed out to Laura, it probably wouldn’t have made a difference to you either way. If you go out of your way to find fault with something, you are going to find it. I am sure that if I spent ten minutes going through the content here on THIS site I would find something that offends me — if I choose to LET it offend me. The problem is, you created a scenario with the intent of “exposing” a bias and complained when that bias was exposed.
“Emily” is probably the name of every moderator for that site. (S)he probably doesn’t even work for the Obama campaign, but for a company that is contracted to work for the campaign. The flaw in your argument is that you still assume that it is possible to have a system that is 100 percent infallible. I have yet to find one that is even close.
But hey, we can argue back and forth on this all week and never get anywhere on it.
I have finished my work on this site and am going to move on. Have fun with all that Exposing Obama stuff.
Comment by DJ Allyn, Technical Advisor — August 10, 2008 @ 6:03 pm
It’s quite likely, but it does not speak well of the readers that they did not click on the handy link to have the hate speech removed. Same for MoveOn.org–the other users voted approval of the most vicious imaginable hate speech. This is consistent with Obama’s church, which gave Michael Pfleger’s racist tirade a standing ovation.
Actually not–I found a Nathanial, a Caitlin, and I think a Ryan.
It’s Obama’s responsibility to hire reliable people. If he doesn’t, the results are his fault and not mine.
On another note, you said that the anti-Semitic material could have been posted by Obama’s enemies to make him look bad. Some of it could indeed have been posted by trolls. On the other hand, the site is overflowing with rumors to the effect that McCain has an age-related neurodegenrative disease. How do we know that some of these are not coming from Obama campaign staffers who post under assumed names?
The bottom line is that Barry is responsible for his site’s content. If he does not want to be held accountable for both the hate speech and the McCain rumors, he had better moderate it 100 percent or else shut it down.
Comment by Bill Levinson — August 11, 2008 @ 12:22 am
[...] has been argued that Barack Obama is not responsible for the anti-Semitic hate speech that keeps showing up on his official campaign Web site at my.barackobama.com. The site even [...]
Pingback by Is Obama Responsible for “McCain is Senile” Rumors? « The Husaria — August 11, 2008 @ 2:06 am
[...] has been argued that Barack Obama is not responsible for the anti-Semitic hate speech that keeps showing up on his official campaign Web site at my.barackobama.com. The site even [...]
Pingback by Israpundit » Blog Archive » Is Obama Responsible for “McCain is Senile” Rumors? — August 11, 2008 @ 11:37 am
Apparently they have time to monitor Israpundit and WND since the comments were removed such a short time after having appeared on these sites respectively. Yet they remained for weeks or months on mybarackobama, but were never noticed by the site administrator or no one who is a member bothered to bring it to their attention? What does that say about the people who support Obama that they don’t find such content objectionable enough to bring it to the attention of the site administrator and have those haters accounts removed? It seems obvious that the only reason the hate speech was removed after having appeared on Israpundit and WND is because of the embarrassment it would cause Obama now that the wider public was made aware of the content.
Comment by Laura — August 11, 2008 @ 3:36 pm