It hit the Internet and conservative talk shows like a lightning bolt…a “report” (who cared if it was confirmed or not or true or not?) that Barack Obama’s trip to India was going to cost $200 million. How could it NOT be true? Rush Limbaugh was in full Obama demonization throttle about it (but then Limbaugh is to facts what pizza is to dieting)..Some blogs were raging about it. Michelle Bachmann called it “massive overspending” (and how could anything coming out of Michelle Bachmann’s mouth be anything but true?). Sean Hannity made it a huge issue out of it but some Fox Newers who were not rip-n-read partisans raised their eyebrows at the “report.” The White House tried defusing the reports (but who cares what they say if Michelle Bachmann said something else?).
The teenie-weenie problem was:
It was not true.
But since when did that ever prevent hours of political outrage, since our politics has now evolved it a kind of looped sting of outrage and anger over events (perceived or real) committed or purported to be commmited by the the other sports team political party. Those are much easier to write and rage about than boring old policy ideas and whip up emotions.
CNN”s Anderson Cooper offers this great segment documenting a totally fallacious attack “issue” — one that most assuredly has left a lot people still believing it is true (so for some who were ranting about it in the end it had a political plus side in the unending war to negatively define those who don’t have the same party letter in front of their name as you do).
On the other hand, there are some weird aspects about Obama’s trip to India..
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.