Karen Tumulty misleads for Barack Obama (Jeffrey Frederick)

Karen Tumulty of Time Magazine offers this bit of mainstream media wisdom designed explicitly to support Barack Obama. It starts with something that could have been written by the BHO campaign:

If John McCain is as serious as he says about running a "respectful" campaign against an opponent he considers "a decent person," word hasn't yet trickled down to his newly opened storefront field office in Gainesville, Virginia.

Then, she shows her lack of respect for anything approaching real reporting:

With so much at stake, and time running short, [Jeffrey Frederick, Chairman of the Virginia Republican Party] did not feel he had the luxury of subtlety. He climbed atop a folding chair to give 30 campaign volunteers who were about to go canvassing door to door their talking points — for instance, the connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden: "Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon," he said. "That is scary." It is also not exactly true — though that distorted reference to Obama's controversial association with William Ayers, a former 60s radical, was enough to get the volunteers stoked. "And he won't salute the flag," one woman added, repeating another myth about Obama. She was quickly topped by a man who called out, "We don't even know where Senator Obama was really born." Actually, we do; it's Hawaii.

1. The Weathermen did indeed bomb the Pentagon. The only thing Tumulty can hang her hat on is whether Ayers himself was directly involved; as he was a Weathermen leader, that's a very fine point.

2. We can probably assume that OBL was behind the plane crashing into the Pentagon.

3. Therefore, the only thing "not exactly true" about that Frederick contention is a) the extent to which Ayers was personally involved in the Pentagon bombing, and b) the extent to which flying a jet into a building qualifies as a "bombing".

4. Tumulty then makes a magical leap, referring to "another myth" as if what she'd just discussed was a myth.

5. Frederick was not the person who said the bit about the flag, nor was he the person who said the bit about where BHO was born. Tumulty doesn't tell us whether Frederick heard what they said and what he said in response.

6. Where exactly BHO was born - and whether he's even a U.S. citizen - is still an open question. Unless Tumulty has definitive proof, she's just misleading Time's millions of readers in order to support Barack Obama.

UPDATE: Here's a more in-depth discussion about where Barack Obama was born.

UPDATE 2: See this summary page for the truth about what we know and what we don't know about where Obama was born.

Politics · Sun, 10/12/2008 - 14:56 · · Importance: 4