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Hillary Clinton and the Black Panthers |
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Part 1: Smear Tactics on the Net
Dateline: 10/18/00
By David Emery
For practitioners of the low art of the political smear, heaven is a place called the Internet. Never has it been so effortless or inexpensive to spread disinformation about ideas or candidates you oppose. For the price of a dial-up account, you, too can become an online rumormonger. You, too can exploit the power of the printed word unhampered by nosy editors or fact-checkers. You, too can sway the minds of the masses.
The most popular techniques are age-old but still effective: Take facts out of context, misrepresent them, exaggerate; use innuendo to pander to the fears and prejudices of your audience.
Say, for example, you want to portray Republican presidential candidate G.W. Bush as a racist. Start with a naked fact: Bush sold a house in 1995 with a deed stipulating that only white people can live in it. Omit the context: So-called "racial covenants" – ugly artifacts of an era when segregation was legal in parts of the U.S. – are still to be found in the original paperwork on older houses in states like Texas. They're completely void under state and federal law. People don't typically try to remove them because the legal requirements to do so can be expensive and time-consuming. Nonetheless, you exaggerate Bush's culpability: "It's extremely irresponsible for a public figure to accidentally overlook such a stipulation." And finally, pander: "Did the media deliberately fail to cover this story? Do you think it would have been handled differently if a similar story was revealed about a black candidate?"
I didn't make up this example. This very rumor has been circulating by email for the better part of a year. It proves neither that G.W. Bush is a racist nor that he's insensitive to the concerns of black people – except possibly in the minds of those predisposed to think so. If it accomplishes just that much, it's a successful smear.
Smearing Hillary
Now consider the Internet case against Hillary Clinton. An email launched in December 1999 when Clinton was preparing to announce her run for U.S. Senate in New York (and which has made the rounds ever since) seeks to convince us that Clinton was an avid apologist for murderers in the Black Panther Party 30 years ago when she was a student at Yale University. You'll recognize the techniques used.
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