Meme alert: “Probably many of you have heard the same rumblings”
by WonkoKevin
It’s always so easy to tell when my students plaguerize. All I need to do is take a full sentence from their text and stick it into Google and see what comes up. Today’s plaguerized text of the day is spreading the rumor that Joe Biden will step down and Hillary Clinton will step in as VP. Here’s the anonymous email being passed around (sometimes it’s appropriately cited and sometimes it’s simply portrayed as though written by the blogger on the site):
Let me share some info with you that I have gotten from excellent sources within the DNC: On or about October 5th, Biden will excuse himself from the ticket, citing health problems, and he will be replaced by Hillary. This is timed to occur after the VP debate on 10/2. There have been talks all weekend about how to proceed with this info. generally, the feeling is that we should all go ahead and get it out there to as many blog sites and personal email lists as is possible. I have already seen a few short blurbs about this - the “health problem” cited in those articles was aneurysm. Probably many of you have heard the same rumblings. However, at this point, with this inside info from the DNC, it looks like this Obama strategy will be a go. Therefore, it seems that the best strategy is to get out in front of this Obama maneuver, spell it out in detail, and thereby expose it for the grand manipulation that it is. So, let’s start mixing this one up and cut the Obamites off at the pass - send this info out to as many people as you can - post about it on websites and blogs, etc.
When I did a Google search on “biden ‘probably many of you have heard the same rumblings’” I got 582 hits. I find it terribly interesting that almost all of the discussion concerning the email is whether it strategically makes sense, rather than whether it’s true. There’s an almost working assumption the email must be real and that Obama’s meeting with Clinton in Harlem was were the devil deal was made.
The analysis I’ve found that I got the biggest kick out of was from Death by 1000 Papercuts. “Mondo” does a detailed examination of Obama and McCain’s web sites and merchandise stores and smells something funny; while McCain was quick to add Palin to the web site and merchanside, there is almost no Obama-Biden merchandise available:
Thinking, “this is how rumors get started,” a little road trip seemed to be in order. If Joe Biden were not the solid VP pick–and due to be replaced in the rumored “October Surprise”–it would seem that there wouldn’t be much of an investment made by the Obama campaign in Obama-Biden campaign materials and merchandise. We visited three Obama campaign offices in three different states, called several others in a few states picked at random and checked out Barackobama.com’s online store to see what the situation was. There seemed to be plenty of campaign material for Barack Obama, sans Biden. In fact, “Obama-Biden” didn’t seem to be much on display at all in any of the offices.
It’s been nearly a month since Barack Obama named Joe Biden as his vice-presidential pick: what’s the hold-up with the Obama-Biden campaign materials? Why is there almost no Obama-Biden merchandise available? This is a candidate whose campaign has planned for this race for months–some would say years. As was stated, there is no end to the “Only Obama” campaign materials.
Joyce, in the Portland OR Obama office told us that, “No one has any (Obama-Biden campaign merchandise). We don’t have any Obama-Biden stuff. The national campaign says it’s sold out and back-ordered. It’ll be about two weeks until we get any.” Two weeks? That would place the date around the 4th or 5th of October, incidentally.
We talked to Paul in the Washington PA Obama office–which was busy at the time–and he told us that there wasn’t any Obama-Biden signs, t-shirts or stickers in that office, at least right now. We were told that there were “some Obama-Biden buttons. We’re asking a $50 donation for them.” … Dan, at the Belmont office in Bellaire OH, said, “No, we don’t have any Obama-Biden signs or T-shirts. They’re supposed to be coming in the next couple weeks.”
