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September 14, 2011
Team Obama Launches 'Attack Watch' Website (Updated)
Topics: Political News and commentaries
Barack Obama's website has launched a silly, if not sinister, Orwellian-like, new page featuring a form that invites the public to report "attacks" on the president. "Watchers" are given the opportunity to provide the "content of an attack or link" and then choose from a drop-down list of sources, which seems to be mostly synonyms for what was previously called the "free press." The "attacks" can ostensibly come in the form of TV interviews, public statements, forwarded e-mails, rumors, TV ads, video ads, robo-calls, websites, and blogs.
From The Hill:
A new Twitter hashtag designed to help fight misinformation against President Obama appears to have backfired in early use on Wednesday.Ezra Dulis and Misfit Politics with Brandon Morse have cranked out this hilarious rejoinder to what Michelle Malkin calls Obama's 4th Brigade of Snitch. The video puts Team Obama's "snitch police" webpage in its appropriately nanny state-like perspective (be sure to watch the whole thing).... The hashtag was already in heavy rotation by Twitter users by Wednesday morning, but many users are conservatives such as columnist Michelle Malkin, who offered up her own daily column as an example of an Obama "attack."
The website is meant to be "the first line of defense against a barrage of misinformation," according to an email from Obama's campaign manager announcing the launch on Tuesday.
Victor Davis Hanson explains why Team Obama's "snitch-building" effort is offensive, perverse, and disturbing:
.... go onto the new ("Paid for by Obama for America") AttackWatch.com website. It reads and looks like some sort of Stasi file ("file" is their vocabulary, not mine). It asks readers to inform them of criticism of Obama. The format is, I guess by intent, supposed to resemble a government intelligence dossier ("Attack files"), with its blaring black and red headers: "Attack" /"Attackers" (followed by names and pictures of the supposed bad guys)/"Attack Type" /("public statements") followed by check off boxes like "Have you seen or heard this attack?" "Yes/No". It reminds me of of living in 1973 dictatorial Greece, when we all kept silent about the Colonels upon entering the apartment building, lest the government-paid concierge write something down not nice in her black book.Little wonder Allahpundit has a dead pool up on how long before Obama's campaign flushes Attack Watch down the toilet.Apparently no one in the administration learned from the spooky tone of the now defunct Journolist. That obtuseness begs the question, what is it with these extra-journalistic efforts to intimidate critics, as if the 2012 campaign will be based around deterrence: e.g., as if: "Beware: if you criticize Barack Obama, your name and picture will appear on our "Attack File". We are watching you, so you watch out!"
So creepier still is the request to snoop around and collect evidence for what the Roman emperors and French monarchs used to call maiestas/Lese-majeste -- supposed crimes against the head of state, by circulating criticism of his authority that might lessen his proper sense of majesty. Indeed, on AttackWatch.com there is a special pop-up window that is reminiscent of Crimestoppers.com that supposedly will help form some sort of a clearing house: "Your email"/"content of attack or link"/"Attack type", "Attach" with a link "Report" that pops up yet another window.
Here's Fox's Megan Kelly moderating a debate on the subject:
H/t - Charles Cook, Michelle Malkin
Posted by Hyscience at September 14, 2011 12:54 PM
Articles Related to Political News and commentaries:
- Team Obama Launches 'Attack Watch' Website (Updated) - Sep 14, 2011
