re: #54 Wendell Zurkowitz ((slave to the waffle light))

we also saw a deranged climate in which anything, no matter how spurious or unfounded, was promoted if it seemed to harm Obama.

It started with birtherism and went downhill from there.

This didn’t start with Obama. Recall that during the 1990’s, Hillary spoke of a vast RW conspiracy out to get her husband and was mocked for doing so.

From the day Bill Clinton assumed office, the RW, led by the WSJ editorial page, was out to get him. No allegation was too outrageous to be published on their opinion pages, including repeated charges of various murders earlier in Arkansas and then in Washington, starting with Vince Foster’s suicide. The WSJ was eager to publish any charge, since unlike on their news pages, there was no need to investigate the merits of these allegations.