Obama says his wife did not say 'whitey' in speech

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Democrat Barack Obama's campaign said today that Michelle Obama never used the word "whitey" in a speech from the church pulpit as he launched a Web site to debunk rumors about his campaign.

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, www.fightthesmears.com. "Michelle Obama has not spoken from the pulpit at Trinity and has not used that word."

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Truth be told, the main reason I'm commenting on this story is because the headline is just about the funniest thing I've seen in a week. I mean, what is she? George Jefferson? Pretty much nobody from Michelle Obama's generation ever says "whitey." Clearly, this "whitey" attack is bullshit at face value.

I would even go so far as to say that, even if it were true, it's not that big of a deal. As far as I've ever been able to tell, the racial epithet "whitey" always had more of a connotation criticizing the white power structure, rather than white individuals, and, believe me, the white power structure is still very much in need of criticism. Further, even if "whitey" is to be taken as a racial attack on white people in general, it's like, so what, white people still dominate the United States--"whitey," "cracker," and numerous other anti-white racial slurs will never ever ever be the same thing as the n-word or its ilk; when you're part of the privileged majority they really are simply words. "Whitey" is just kind of lame; the n-word is patently offensive.

But never mind all that. Michelle Obama did not rail against "whitey." It's fucking absurd to think that. But then, it was also absurd to think that John Kerry got his Purple Heart in Vietnam by shooting himself in the foot: the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, an independent GOP hatchet smear squad, managed to blanket the airwaves with all kinds of bullshit about Kerry, pulling off the unthinkable, turning an honorable war vet challenging a National Guard deserter for President into a dope smoking hippie piece of shit. Fortunately, the Obama campaign has not forgotten the lessons of '04, and this new Fight the Smears site appears to be part of a coordinated rapid response effort.

Obama doesn't strike me as the kind of Democrat who's just going to roll over and take it. Cool.

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