In the final weeks of the campaign the online rumor mill is churning away, and on Sunday both President Barack Obama’s and Gov. Mitt Romney’s camps had to deny allegations about their candidates that fit right in with the image the opposition is trying to paint. To be honest, the rumors are a little cliché.
Romney, who’s trying to put to bed the notion that he’s an out-of-touch rich guy who got where he is by outsourcing U.S. jobs, became the subject of a Twitter rumor that he had outsourced his own campaign calls to the Philippines. A Romney spokesman denied that to Buzzfeed’s McKay Coppins. Romney’s campaign been has accused of this kind of thing before, but then again, so has Obama’s, and neither really suffered for it.
Meanwhile, the Obama camp was busy denying a rumor to another BuzzFeed writer, Andrew Kaczynski, that the president had held a conference call with his controversial former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, which former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown had reported in the San Francisco Chronicle. Wright, you’ll recall, had been an important figure in Obama’s life before the then-candidate distanced himself from the sometimes radical pastor in 2008.
But come on, Internet. These rumors are pretty pedestrian, don’t you think? Believable to people who already believe these things, but hard to prove, and not really a big deal to anyone still making up their mind. You can do better.
