Day Five Without Michelle Obama's Video Surfacing. Was Lie Based on a Published Work of Fiction?

Sad to say that it took the right wing National Review had someone who remembered a book in which a black candidate was heard saying he'd f* whitey" if he got into office.

Then again, the way the incident makes Republicans look good, it becomes more suspicious all the time.

Did Republicans pretend to have seen the video to get some Democrats to believe it existed?

TPM reports: 

Now Jim Geraghty of National Review has claimed that the rumor may be based on...fiction. A political thriller called The Power Broker, published in 2006 by Stephen Frey, features the presidential campaign of Dem candidate Jesse Wood, who's aspiring to be the country's first African-American president.

We went out and got the book. And sure enough, in the novel, Wood's opponents discover video of the candidate himself -- not his wife -- discussing with a radical black minister how he will "f--- whitey" when he gets into office, despite all his public rhetoric about racial reconciliation. Here's what he says on the fictional tape:

See source for what was said. 

And TPM notes that a reporter actually asked Obama about the video which has never appeared.

Two more points.

• The novel was published in 2006 when Senator Obama was already making some buzz and many expected him to run for president.

• Stephen Frey is not just a novelist.  According to Random House he

is a principal at a Northern Virginia private equity firm. He previously worked in mergers and acquisitions at J.P. Morgan and as a vice president of corporate finance at an international bank in midtown Manhattan

From what I'm reading around the web, Frey's novels seem to aim at trying to make financial people into action adventure characters, so aging money folk can vicariously live young lives full of danger, glamor, and excitement, instead of  looking forward only to drearily moving into and out of top administration cabinet posts, etc.

Not having read the books, I'm not going to judge them, but I think the excerpt at TPM shows how deep his understanding is of black psychology.   

I do smell a set up from a typical Republican dirty tricks crews.  I'm sorry that some Democrats fell for it.   They helped give credence to a theme that Republicans will use throughout the campaign.   The Southern Strategy is alive and well.

tags: barack  obama  michele obama  2008 election  southern strategy  

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