http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/27/AR2008062703 781.html
or http://tinyurl.com/6b3cdf - - - Laid out before Allen, a razor-sharp, 36-year-old political theorist, was what purported to be a biographical sketch of Barack Obama that has become one of the most effective -- and baseless -- Internet attacks of the 2008 presidential season. The anonymous chain e-mail makes the false claim that Obama is concealing a radical Islamic background. By the time it reached Allen on Jan. 11, 2008, it had spread with viral efficiency for more than a year. ... But long before this, Allen had been obsessing about the origins of her e-mail at the institute, which is most famous for having been the research home of Albert Einstein. Allen studies the way voters in a democracy gather their information and act on what they learn. She was familiar, of course, with the false rumors of a secret love child that helped sink McCain's White House bid in 2000, and the Swift boat attacks that did the same to Democrat John Kerry in 2004. But the Obama e-mail was on another plane: The use of the Internet made it possible to launch anonymous attacks that could reach millions of voters in weeks or even days. As an Obama supporter -- she had met the senator while she worked as a dean at the University of Chicago -- it made her angry. And curious. "I started thinking, 'How does one stop it?' " ... Allen was ideally suited to embark on such a difficult hunt. She boasts two doctorates, one in classics from Cambridge University and the other in government from Harvard University, and won a $500,000 MacArthur "genius" award at the age of 29. Last year she joined the faculty of the institute, the only African American and one of a handful of women at the elite research center, where she works alongside groundbreaking physicists, mathematicians and social scientists. They don't have to teach, and they face no quotas on what they publish. Their only mandate is to work in the tradition of Einstein, wrestling with the most vexing problems in the universe. - - - So this is what our future elite wanna-be Einsteins are up to: figuring out how to stop the hoi polloi from starting silly rumors against their darling left-wing politicians--that is to say, how to end free speech. Frankly, a far more interesting and useful thing to study would have been how the whole Joe Wilson/Valery Plame farce made it into our political folklore, considering there is no basis in fact whatsoever for the claim she was a covered agent (whose identity could be "leaked"), or that her identity was revealed by the White House (when it was known by the prosecutor from the beginning that Richard Armitage at the State Department, an internal enemy of the alleged perps at the WH, was the original "leaker"). The news media continues to report this lie again and again and again... and yet this apparent internal CIA hit-job on a sitting president doesn't bother Allen's pretty little brain one bit. Instead, she's in a froth over some stupid email that two pajama-wearing newsgroup lurkers at Free Republic started, the response to which frankly has been rather like a hammer on a fly. This is supposed to be of the "most vexing problems in the universe" upon which her gigantic super-computer of a brain was unleashed? Another imponderable she might have aimed her massive IQ at might be the origin of the rumor that McCain is a Republican. But anyway. The main point is: What a waste of supposed intellect--the vain pursuit of justification for one's political favorites. I understand that being the case here on our esteemed OT forum, but this is supposed to be a Harvard educated person who was awarded gozzillians of dollars to do nothing but sit and solve humanities deepest problems. Sign me up for that job--when it comes to wasted intellect and vain pursuits, I'm more qualified than this under-achieving dingbat! ;) - Bob _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
