Are YOU one of the 400??

On another political blog, a PUMA snottly dismissed the comments from myself and a few other non-PUMAs with "Are you one of the 400?" and "you must be one of the 400, I hope you're happy with your blood money!"

400?

So I got curious. And overturned yet another rock in the PUMA garden and saw the things under it.

The legend goes that an information scroll running during a Fox News broadcast said that "the Obama campaign has hired 400 bloggers to influence the public discourse and sway Hillary voters to "remember we are all Democrats"

The first comment on it appers on 15 May at "HillBuzz", though the link they cite goes to a 11 May an attack article at "Lavender Liberal" that doesn't mention it at all. Dunno if they edited it after the fact or what. In any case, it was a second-hand report with no screen shot of the supposed information crawl.

From there it made the rounds to Democratic Underground on 15 May, (where it was pretty much soundly shot down), and hillaryclintonforum.net, where the martyr brigade went into overtime on it.

On 16 May "Katiebird" at "Riverdaughter" commented on "400 bloggers fighting for Barack Obama’s desperate delusion?"

It showed up in the comments on one of Larry Johnson's "honest, the whitey tape really exists I double swear cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die-stick-a-finger-in-my-eye" posts at the formerly sane "NoQuarter".

"Hyper-Educated-Uppity-Woman" also did a 16 May post on it, snarking about "Obama Boyz" with the pretty sexist comment:

"It seems that Barky Obama knows it too. He's hired 400 new bloggers to "sway" us women that they and their fellow sexist pig, misogynist Barry Obama, is good for us. God, I wonder how many of these guys' wives actually stayed with them."

Joseph Cannon at Cannonfire also chimed in on 16 May, claiming:

"that Obama controlled the Hillary-hate in the first place. His was the hand on the spigot. He is the one we must blame for the ceaseless smears and calumnies."

"The Real Spiel" rounded up the 16 May posts with 400 Obama bloggers roundup which referred back to most of the other posts on it.

The problem? At this point all of these people screaming about these "400 paid bloggers" keep referring back to each other. Like a rabid version of the worm Ouroboros, the story kept feeding on itself, developing more and more outrage and hatred. All without a single scrap of evidence that any of these so-called "400 paid bloggers" actually exist.

17 May the pro-Obama blogger Ben Vos, aka "OneBadClam" encountered it and tried to ask a couple of the people promoting the rumour where it came from. The requests either referred back to the other posts on it or his messages were deleted and he was banned, in one case even banned as BEING one of the "400 paid bloggers"

And today it's still being used by PUMAs. I suspect it's their way of trying to blow off the support Sen. Obama has - if they can blow off people defending him as one of the "400 paid bloggers", then it helps block the feeling that maybe there's a reason WHY they supported him that doesn't involve cults or kool-aid. And so the angst grows, outrage and hatred over a myth, not reality.

It's pretty effective, eh? Create a rumour with no basis in fact, absolutely no evidence it's true except for people's NEED to believe it's true. Bounce it around the echo chambers and generate outrage. Anyone dares ask questions, smear them as being one of the people IN that rumour. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Comments

[Damien]

Oh no, I do this shit for free. If Obama wants to pay me for my bloggin' skeelz--exactly what I'm doing right now? You won't see me stopping him. I swear, the more PUMA members I see posting, the more outrageous they become and the more irritated I get. There's just no more sense anymore; like you said Patrick, they're just posting information from previous posts. They have nothing really credible to say except for quoting someone's post who had no documentation.

I was arguing with a PUMA/Repub the other day and this person told me that Iraq was training Al Qaeda. See, if some PUMA/Repub saw this, they would probably assume this person is making a true statement because it is in line with what they believe. Oh how far that is from the truth. Rumsfeld and Rice SPECULATED that Iraq was training Al Qaeda in chemical warfare BUT HAD NO PROOF. Just because someone at the White House says something, you don't just bend over and take it. It's like one PUMA shits and the other one stands on top of it just to get a little higher, and the process continues until the mound reaches ridiculous heights. I hope they fall back into their own shit.

Thanks for the new info Patrick!!

[Patrick McKinnion]

I used to live in the Middle East, and anyone who makes that claim has no idea about the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims or the infighting between the various branches.

Al Qaeda is a Sunni Islamic terrorist group. Many of it's followers and support money come from Wahabbist fundementalists. (Wahabbism is the version of Islam you find in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and most of the Gulf states, though most of them don't go near to the extremes that KSA does.)

As a rule of thumb, Al Qaeda HATE Shias, they consider them infidels at best. They also hate secular Muslim countries because their goal is to unify Islam under a theological caliphate. Al Qaeda makes Shia countries (like Iran) very nervious, (which is why Iran offered the US help to track down Al Qaeda members after 9/11.) Iraq under Hussain was a nominally secular country with a mixed Sunni/Shia population, and Hussain hated Al Qaeda. Now, it has a heavily Shia government aligning itself with Iran and Sunni warlords getting assistance from groups in Saudi Arabia who want to weaken the House of Saud. (not that the House of Saud isn't falling apart on its own.)

[Patrick McKinnion]

David - agreed. A friend who was raised Jewish read this and said it reminded her of how the Protocols of the Elders of Zion started.

[David]

It's the common theme. Be it witchhunts in Salem or outing Communists in Hollywood (What was McCarthy's number that he 'read' off of a blank piece of paper?). It's mass-hysteria, if PUMAS could actually qualify as 'mass'-anything.

And yeah, i've been accused of being one of the 400 on a blog or two, but it settled a feeling that I had all along. The one true way to debunk a conspiracy theory is to be accused of being a pivotal part of one.

[David]

Seriously, feel free to delete my multiple post and put me in mod queue until I figure out how to post via Blackberry.

LOL

[Patrick McKinnion]

"Seriously, feel free to delete my multiple post and put me in mod queue until I figure out how to post via Blackberry."

Laugh, no problem, deleted the extra one

[Christina]

This is going into our "Quit the myth" section.