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The Rumors the Press Won't Cover

Most don't pass the smell test, and some are just plain nuts

By Gabriel Winant, Newser User

Posted Oct 31, 2008 11:19 AM CDT

(Newser) – It’s been a year for political rumors and paranoia. In Politico, Ben Smith rounds up some of the salacious tidbits readers keep haranguing the press to cover.

Obama’s not a citizen. At first, this rumor focused on having a parent born elsewhere, then moved on to suggesting his birth certificate was hidden or forged.
John McCain used a particularly misogynist slur against his wife in 1992. No reporters have found evidence to replicate this story, reported by a Democratic operative.

Michelle Obama is on tape ranting about white people. One rumor said she’d been recorded using the word “whitey,” another said she’d talked about “white racists.” Neither was true.
McCain is responsible for the 1967 fire on the US Forrestal that killed 134 sailors. A liberal site claimed that a risky maneuver by McCain could have started the fire. FactCheck.org says otherwise.
Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga is Obama’s cousin. The evidence? An email, purportedly from Obama to Odinga, which “clearly was not written by a native English speaker.”
McCain heaped abuse on fellow vacationers in Fiji and forced them to listen to him read aloud from Faulkner. It's been discredited, too. “Faulkner was a huge problem," said Alexander Cockburn. "Hemingway, yes. But would he really read Faulkner?"

[Quotes (1)]

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. speaks at a Town Square Stop at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2008. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

The cover of the July 21, 2008, New Yorker issue by artist Barry Blitt shows Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama dressed as a Muslim and his wife as a terrorist. (AP Photo/New Yorker)

Sarah Obama, 86, grandmother of Barack Obama, smiles as she talks with journalists in her home town of Kolengo, western Kenya, in March. (AP Photo/Riccardo Gangale)

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Whenever Obama builds a lead — that's when you hear a new one. The calmest period for this stuff was the two weeks when McCain was ahead in the polls. - David Weigel, writer for Reason Magazine

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The Rumors the Press Won't Cover

Most don't pass the smell test, and some are just plain nuts