Michelle Obama | Whitey

Democrat Barack Obama's campaign said Thursday that Michelle Obama never used the word "whitey" in a speech from the church pulpit as it launched a Web site to debunk rumors about him and his wife.The rumor that Michelle Obama railed against "whitey" in a diatribe at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ has circulated on conservative Republican blogs for weeks and was repeated by radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. The rumor included claims of a videotape of the speech that would be used to bring down Obama's candidacy this fall."No such tape exists," the campaign responds on the site, http://www.fightthesmears.com....

The pro-Hillary blog HillBuzz gives the most detailed description of the alleged Michelle Obama tape yet. The HillBuzz description of the tape still raises a few questions, though. They say, "The Michelle Obama Rant Tape was filmed between June 26th - July 1st 2004 in Chicago, IL at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Conference at Trinity United Church", but the Rainbow/PUSH event in 2004 was held at the Sheraton, not Trinity United; did the church cosponsor it or something?

A blogger reports on various 'alleged' transcripts of the tape. The blogger is currently showing two different transcripts from two different sources, which means that one of them must be incorrect.What is interesting is how similar the two versions are from a content perspective. Both of the alleged transcripts have Michelle Obama talking about Hurricane Katrina and Iraq among other thing.To reinforce the credibility the Blogger states that the two transcripts are from independent sources, and because two independent sources have the same stories, there must be some truth there.

The blog on the Houston Chronicle is now claiming that this story is a hoax. While they can't confirm that the video does not exist (proving non-existence is hard), they say that the original source of the information is woefully biased and "a nutjob with a capital N."

This blogger reports that Bob Beckel, a democratic strategist, says that "the shoe will drop regarding Michelle tomorrow" and says that the shoe is "much worse" than the thesis issue.This is the first report that sites a mainstream media sourcing. This sort (a right wing blog) also says that it could be the Hillary campaign.As of 6/3/2008 at 2:48 Central Time, there is not any confirmation or transcript of Beckels remarks on the foxnews.com site.