Anti-Semitic content on Obama’s Web site? (Part 1)
Barack Obama’s detractors have made a game out of finding anti-Israel and anti-Semitic material on Obama’s social networking site, My.BarackObama.com, and using it to smear Obama. In this, part 1 of our response, we discuss the motives behind it and what its architects don’t tell you about the offensive content. In part 2, we discuss how anti-Semitism in the Republican party should be of much greater concern to Jewish Americans than offensive content on Obama’s site.
The more brazen variants of this smear have claimed that since the material is on an “official” Obama Web site, he must agree with it. This is patently absurd, since it’s obviously impossible for Obama’a staff to review the hundreds of thousands of articles and comments posted on the site (Google has indexed over 650,000 pages on the site, over 40,000 in August alone, i.e., about one for every minute of every day of the month). Furthermore, every content page on the site clearly states, “Content on blogs in My.BarackObama represents the opinions of community members and in no way should be interpreted as endorsed or approved by the campaign.”
Therefore, the most recent smears in this genre have gotten more subtle. They acknowledge that the Obama campaign says that they don’t review all content but remove offensive content quickly when it is brought to their attention. They acknowledge that some offensive content has in fact been removed. And they even acknowledge that there is some pro-Israel and philosemitic content. But they still insist on reporting the anti-Israel, anti-Semitic content as if it is news. Their goal in doing so is two-fold:
- Even while acknowledging that the Obama campaign disclaims the content, they hope to insinuate that if the campaign really disapproved of it, they’d take it down.
- They want us to wonder why people who are anti-Israel and anti-Semitic would like Obama if he doesn’t feel the same way.
What the architects of these smears usually neglect to mention is that much of the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic material on the site is being posted by people who are openly critical of Obama’s stance on Israel. They do not post their anti-Israel material because they believe Obama agrees with it. Rather, they post it because they believe Obama does not agree with it, and they are trying to rally those who agree, so that together they can lobby Obama to change his views. Unfortunately for them, he does not seem to be listening.
Obama’s willingness to let anyone join his site and to let new members post new content immediately after joining shows a fundamental respect for freedom of speech and confidence that good, true ideas will win out over bad ones.
It would be fun to see whether John McCain’s site has a similar problem with content posted by people who don’t actually agree with McCain. Alas, McCain threw away his old social networking site and all of its content and launched a new one only a few days ago. Right now, McCain’s new site has less than 800 pages on it, or only 0.1% of the amount of content on Obama’s site. That’s not exactly enough data to draw any meaningful conclusions. Also, the scuttlebutt is that, unlike Obama’s site, McCain’s is aggressively moderated, and content that reflects poorly on him is removed quickly. Apparently, McCain’s not much of a free-speech advocate.
Continue reading part 2.