Still waiting for the Rightroots movement, cont'd
Written by Eric Boehlert
Published
We're just repeating ourselves at this point, but repetition has it's place. The point here is that the traditional Beltway press literally cannot stop writing about conservative bloggers. Yes, they've been lapped by their liberal counterparts. Yes, they just proved themselves to be incredibly inept and almost completely irrelevant during the White House run. But for the mainstream press, they're a hot story. (Has the losing side ever garnered this much press attention before?)
The latest outlet that jumped on the bandwagon was the WaPo. That's the same WaPo that, by our calculations, has never published a full-length feature on an A-list liberal blogger. Just sayin'.
Here's what's really annoying about the Post piece and about all the other, can-the-GOP-figure-out-the-Internet-stories. They all whitewash what today's conservative blogosphere is. For instance, the Post suggests that the reason the netroots took off was because it opposed Bush, and now with Obama in the White House maybe the rightroots will do the same. The Post also mentions that historically conservative bloggers have taken a more top-down approach vs. the organic debate found at Daily Kos.
So that's it. GOP bloggers have lagged behind because they didn't have an opponent in the White House and they just took a different, top-down approach. Here's what the Post politely failed to mention: Lots of the high-profile conservative bloggers are pretty much insane and they wallow in the most laughable conspiracy theories ever hatched.
Again, the Post was too nice to mention these, so, with a hat tip to Jon Swift, we'll highlight some of the rightroot's greatest hits from the recent campaign. We think they pretty much answer the question of why conservative bloggers aren't a serious political force in this country. For some reason none of this ever make into the the gee-whiz stories about the 'emerging' rightroots movement.
Here were just some of the stories (i.e. conspiracy theories) that prominent conservative bloggers chased, at times relentlessly, during the 2008 campaign; stories they complained the mainstream media just wouldn't touch:
*While attending Columbia University in the early 1980's and interested in the South African divestiture movement, Obama was involved in violent protests, including domestic terrorist bombings, that erupted when a South African rugby team toured America.
*Obama had an affair with a young female staffer who was promptly exiled to a Caribbean country by an angry Michelle Obama who discovered the blossoming relationship.
*Obama's deeply personal memoir, Dreams of My Fathers, was actually ghost-written by Bill Ayers, the former '60's radical-turned college professor who befriended Obama in Chicago in the 1990's.
*Michelle Obama did an interview with something called African Press International where she condemned “American white racists” who were bringing up issues of Obama's citizenship.
*Obama was not born in the United States, and therefore not eligible to President. The birth certificate his campaign posted online to debunk that story was actually a forgery. And that he was actually born in Kenya.
*When Obama went to visit his ailing grandmother in Hawaii in October, he was really traveling there in order to deal with controversy about his birth certificate.
*Obama was getting answers in the first debate through a clear plastic hearing aid in his ear.
*Obama is the illegitimate son of Malcolm X.