Media Tries to Spin the Rumored Michelle Obama "Whitey Tape" as a Republican Smear

I've been following the various rumors about a tape that purported to show Michelle Obama using the racial epithet "whitey" since it first broke on the blog of an ardently pro-Hillary Dem activist on May 16th. The rumor just kind of sat there until another Dem activist, Bob Beckel, kick-started the rumor during an appearance on Fox News. After this had been swirling in the blogosphere for a couple of weeks Rush Limbaugh finally mentioned something about it on his show, but didn't give it much credence. The genesis of this whole thing has been easy to follow by anyone who cared to do a little research.

The media has decided to ignore the original posting from May 16th and instead focus on Rush Limbaugh's comments and try to make him the villian for mentioning a rumor that had been circulating for days. It's clearly in the interest of the pro-Obama media to try and blame this story on conservatives rather than on its original source, and in a striking display of hypocrisy, Bob Beckel, who gave this rumor a new life on Fox News, went back on Fox News and blasted conservative bloggers for writing about the story that he promoted. He even stooped to using a racist epithet of his own in the process, calling conservatives "crackers". Here's the transcript from the Fox News appearance:

BAIER: FightTheSmears.com. Set up by the Barack Obama campaign. What about that, Bob? Do they need to do this kind of thing?

BECKEL: Well, I suppose they need to do it. But frankly, it requires voters to be civic-minded and go and check these things out. And I don’t think that many of them will. But look: The Internet has changed two things in politics substantially this year. One is money. And the other is how you deliver smears. And what has happened here, particularly against Barack Obama, whether it’s his middle name, whether it’s the fact that he’s black, purely racist and bigoted stuff that I get through my Internet mail, what’s happened is, it comes from these right-wing bloggers and then, the question is—and it gets picked up by right-wing radio talk show hosts—and then, the question is, does the mainstream media then begin to ask questions about it, which then legitimizes it, and that’s really the problem.

It’s people in your business, Bret, that have got to—you gotta not ask these questions—because what it does, when you do ask the question, it then lets the radio talk show hosts come back and say something. I got into a problem with Rush—

BAIER: I’ll say that’s a fine thing to say, however, let’s say that in this bushel of things that you get one that really is true?

BECKEL: If you’ve got some evidence, that’s fine. But these guys don’t have any evidence. This story that they ran about Michelle Obama, which by the way, I got in some trouble on by trying to cut it off and, and Rush Limbaugh got on the radio and said, ‘Well, Bob Beckel mentioned it’—I did not mention it. I said that there were smears coming around, one of them had to do with Barack Obama, and that gave Limbaugh the chance to say it all over again. Look, that is a not true story. You wouldn’t go with that story without some evidence…

BAIER: No, of course not. But my point is, is that they’ll paint a big brush here, and perhaps in the mix, there may be something a reporter may be afraid to go after, uh, that there would be some truth—

BECKEL: Well, I’ll tell ya what. Let these crackers and right-wingers prove it before they put it, before they come out…

Those are some fine supporters you have there, Barack.