The day my innocence died.
June 24th, 2008 | by Scott Jennings |Wonkette: The D.C. Gossip » Blog Archive » Barack Obama Smeared By His Own Web Site
Hmm, tell us more about this “Obama Bin Laden.” He is the one plotting against ‘Nilla from a Pakistani cave while guzzling Chinese Communist ethanol, no? [BarackObama.com via Jennings Rampage]
So, that made my day pretty interesting yesterday. On Sunday night, Jeff told he spotted that typo, and I was totally, “no way.” I made him send me a screenshot, which he did, and when I got home, I saw the error was still there, took a screenshot in Safari (to douchebag it up a little), slapped the caption on, blogged it, emailed Wonkette for grins, and called it a night. It was about 3am by that point.
By the time I got in to work on Monday, Wonkette had taken a screenshot of their own, omitted my hilarious Internet caption, and ran the story. I didn’t get a ton of clickthroughs since they had the whole thing on their site, but the traffic definitely jumped. And then Hot Air (no link, a-holes) picked it up from Wonkette, and linked directly to my site, which is where the bulk of my traffic came from. Once Hot Air got it, I started getting linked from all sorts of wacky nutso freeper blogs, whose comments ran the gamut from “HE ADMITS IT!” to “THE SECRET’S OUT!” to “I REALLY WANT TO CALL HIM THE N-WORD, BUT THEN MY SECRET WOULD BE OUT!”
Which made me wonder — should I have put this honest mistake of the politician I support out here on the Internet, the preferred conveyance of the moron? I thought it was funny because I get the whole irony thing and I’m in the tank for Obama, so I couldn’t see it as some example of a double standard or an insult to any sensibilities, but a lot of people very clearly did. And all these people have to hang on to is the “secret Muslim” thing, which is code for “did you know he’s BLACK,” and in some way I added a tiny bit of fuel to that. Yesterday, these racist freepers got a little more stroke material, and I paid the web traffic for it. I only wanted liberals to laugh at it.
Speaking of the web traffic:
Things are already basically back to normal, and as far as Web avalanches go, this was terribly minor. Time for business as usual: things only I care about that show up in strange search queries several years later.
3 Responses to “The day my innocence died.”
By Jeff on Jun 25, 2008 | Reply
A politician you support is still a politician, and therefore fair game. There is a big difference between posting an ironic typo, and being a racist piece of shit. I’m glad to give idiots the opportunity to show their true colors. I firmly support Barack Obama and obviously do not think that he is a terrorist. Plus, something had to get some traffic to your poor excuse for a website.
By Damon D. on Jun 27, 2008 | Reply
Scott, out of curiosity, and not having followed your blog… I’m pretty surprised you’re an Obama supporter. Is this fueled by general McCain antipathy or are you bully on some of Obama’s positions?
By Scott Jennings on Jun 28, 2008 | Reply
My politics have definitely shifted since last we chatted. Short version:
* been opposed to the war in Iraq from the start — imperialism bad, war on terror bungled
* have come around on universal healthcare — HMO oligopoly bad, general attitudes towards healthcare in this country messed up, insuring all citizens a basic right on the scale of life, liberty, etc.
* McCain is a joke, Bob Barr is a bigger joke, all parties will increase the size of government, so might as well choose the folks on my side of the social wedge issues
And I really like Obama. Got faith in the guy. Maybe I’ll look back and regret that, but right now, I’m very excited about a candidate for President, and I’m happy about that.