A few readers don’t share my skepticism about the alleged Michelle Obama tape, and wonder why I doubt the HillBuzz account, because it is so “detailed.”
Just as Robert George wrote this post on Ragged Thots about urban legends and Democratic nominee’s wives, I was talking to someone who spent a good chunk of the 1988 campaign trying to track down a long-rumored photo of Kitty Dukakis throwing feces at the American flag in the 1960s. He never found it, and doubts that it ever happened, but he kept running into people who were convinced they saw it.
I’m also reminded of the Able Danger guys and Rep. Curt Weldon who were convinced they had a photo of Mohammed Atta as part of a “Brooklyn Cell” printed before 9/11. That chart was never found, and the DOD Inspector General could not find evidence to support their claims. (I wish the Able Danger guys had been telling verifiable truths.) Apparently after 9/11, the FBI received thousands of calls of people reporting seeing Atta in places they knew he could not have been; people “remembered” seeing him everywhere.
Memories play tricks on people. They remember things that didn’t happen. (Things like sniper fire in Bosnia.)
If we come out and see the tape, I’ll be happy to say that I was wrong, and that I was too skeptical. But the Internet is full of these kinds of vague stories and rumors, stories where the evidence “will be revealed at the right time,” which is always some unspecified point in the future, never today…
Relatively young as I am, I’m old enough to remember “Quidam” posting on FreeRepublic.com, telling eager conservatives that Ken Starr had a smoking gun beyond what was in the report, and that Bill Clinton’s resignation was in the works…
Mind you, this isn’t even including the “purple-faced rage” disinformation efforts by political operatives… sometimes people like to make up stories, and see how many people they can get to buy into them.