Fake Outrage of the Day: Obama Campaign ‘Tried to Bribe Rev. Wright’
I guess it’s going to be like this until November — every day a new bogus outrage for the right wing blogs to hysterically scream about.
Here’s today’s blatantly dishonest post at breitbart.com by one of their hackiest writers, Ben Shapiro: WRIGHT: OBAMA TRIED TO BRIBE ME TO KEEP QUIET IN 2008.
No, Ben, that is not what Rev. Wright said to the New York Post. The Post, of course, also misrepresents their own story, but notice that their headline isn’t quite as egregious as Shapiro’s overheated version: Obama Team Tried to ‘Bribe’ Jeremiah Wright to Keep Quiet: Book - NYPOST.com.
The facts as reported in this article: Rev. Wright claims that an email was sent to a member of his church, offering him $150,000 to “not preach at all until the November election.”
Wright does not say the email was sent by Obama or the “Obama team,” he says it came from “one of Barack’s closest friends.” Even if (and that’s a big “if”) Wright’s story is true, there’s no evidence at all that this offer came from the Obama campaign.
‘Man, the media ate me alive,” Wright told me when we met in his office at Chicago’s Kwame Nkrumah Academy. “After the media went ballistic on me, I received an e-mail offering me money not to preach at all until the November presidential election.”
“Who sent the e-mail?” I asked Wright.
“It was from one of Barack’s closest friends.”
“He offered you money?”
“Not directly,” Wright said. “He sent the offer to one of the members of the church, who sent it to me.”
“How much money did he offer you?”
“One hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” Wright said.
The Post’s headline is bad enough, because the article contradicts its claim that the “Obama team” offered money to Wright. But Ben Shapiro’s breitbart.com headline takes it a step further and says Obama himself tried to “bribe” Wright.
Again we see the right wing blogs in a frenzied uproar over a bogus report that they’re hyping and distorting even beyond the New York Post’s already distorted version.
And of course, if Rev. Wright had said something positive about President Obama, they’d all be calling him a liar.