Michelle Obama

Transcript.

She's going to make a wonderful First Lady.

Cindy McCain lied

She didn't forget. She didn't misspeak. She didn't embellish. She didn't stretch the truth.

She lied:

The latest embellishments come from the McCain camp. Cindy McCain has repeatedly referred to herself as an “only child.” This week came news that she actually has two half sisters, although apparently she had very little contact with them.

The McCain campaign had also put out the story that Mother Teresa “convinced” Cindy to bring home two orphans from Bangladesh in 1991.

Mrs. McCain, it turns out, never met Mother Teresa on that trip. (Once contacted by the Monitor, the campaign revised the story on its website.)

Such exaggerations may simply be the product of a faulty memory or a desire to be “better” than one is in a political culture that requires larger-than-life idols. But with the advent of the fact-checking obsessed blogosphere – and a media racing to keep up – such self-aggrandizement doesn’t last as long as it once did.

“It’s all about myth-making,” says Darrell West, the director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “Politicians love to turn their stories into great epics, and sometimes they have to embellish to smooth out the story line.”

“But now there are too many professional and amateur fact-checkers,” he says. “And there are hundreds if not thousands of bloggers who have detailed knowledge on specialized information, so you really can’t get away with stretching the truth anymore.”

Can you imagine what would have happened in the media if Michelle had lied like Cindy lied?

Exactly.

crossposted at American Street

They really want to go there?

Right wingers want to go after Michelle Obama? They think she's the weak link and think it's a good idea to go after the candidates' spouses?

Because Cindy McCain is a mother lode of scandal. Having an affair with a married man, bookkeeping for the Keating Five, going through drug addiction and stealing from a charity? Want to compare these problems against a non-existent tape of Michelle saying the word 'whitey'?

Is that the only thing they have?

I thought McCain was going to run a positive campaign....